


Critters

by IntoTheRiverStyx



Series: Changing of the Guard [3]
Category: Arthurian Mythology
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Monster Hunters, Angst, Character Study, F/M, Fantasy, M/M, Minor Character Death, On-screen character death, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-23
Updated: 2020-07-23
Packaged: 2021-03-03 05:34:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 28
Words: 48,665
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24329611
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/IntoTheRiverStyx/pseuds/IntoTheRiverStyx
Summary: “Critters?” Bors couldn't let it go.“That's all they are,” Bedivere shrugged, “critters.”“This isn't shooting barn pests with slingshots,” Bors pointed out as if Bedivere did not know.“No, it's shooting them with fire and then stabbing them if they get past that,” Bedivere spoke as if he were Arthur's War Marshall wrangling some particularly stubborn young Knights.Despite himself, Bors laughed for the first time in what must have been years.“What about you?” Bedivere asked, “What critters are you chasing down?”“Critters,” Bors said under his breath, incredulous, “We're facing monsters unleashed by some curse that was completed when the last of the Pendragon blood was spilled on consecrated ground and you call themcritters.”
Relationships: Agrivane/Laurel, Bedivere/Kay (Arthurian), Guinevere/Lancelot du Lac
Series: Changing of the Guard [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1874362
Comments: 35
Kudos: 19





	1. Recognition

He could not have been more alone in the over-crowded tavern if he had made an effort to do so. Everything about him – his scars, his posture, his size, the fury he knew still burned behind his eyes from wrongs so long past the world around him had moved on to newer stories, or to stories that were cast even further back in time that they had nothing to do with Camelot and the curse laid on her name that the twin deaths of Arthur and Mordred had brought to life.

He did not wish for their company per se, he simply did not wish for his only companions to be his memories and his only sense of the passing of time to be the light his shoddy inn window let through no matter how many times he tied and re-tied the coverings.

He had always been hyper-aware of his surroundings, always heard things others missed, caught wind of a fire miles before the smoke was visible.

And so, when he heard a new voice in the tavern say, “An ale, and one for my friend,” and the barkeeper reply, “Your friend? Good luck, stranger?” he knew there was only one person in the bar this stranger was talking about.

He was on his feet and making his way to the bar, unseen and generally unnoticed by the patrons despite how close he came to clipping a few with his elbow.

He was at the bar, next to this stranger, this man who claimed to be his friend, one hand at the short knife he always kept hidden in plain sight. The stranger had not given any indicator he realized Bors was right beside him, had not given Bors anything to go on. A heavy cloak covered his arms, back, and half his legs while a mostly gray beard covered his face.

Bors drew the knife, told himself he would only use it if he was sure this stranger was a threat.

“Bors,” the newcomer said, “I thought you knew better than that.”

Bors dropped the knife and the other man caught it before it hit the ground and gave it back to him, handle pointed towards Bors.

“I will give you credit for how silently you moved through the crowd,” this man finally gave Bors a chance to see his face, “but you seem to have forgotten it's always the target that counts.”

Bors dropped the knife again, this time it hit the floor. There was a memory so long buried that rose from a part of himself he thought dead, the new life it had been granted surging through Bors, a sharpness if how impossible having _this very man_ stand before him felt. The Grail, Galahad carried up to Heaven, the slaughter at Camlann all fading tot he background as this not-so-stranger's face was paired up with a name.

“Bedivere,” Bors breathed, “you're...” What was he going to say? Alive? Here? Still a bit of a smart-ass?

“Whatever you're thinking,” Bedivere raised one eyebrow, “the answer is yes.”

“Well then it's a good thing I wasn't wondering if you were here to kill me,” Bors' reply was so reflexive, such a loud echo of when they were still young men barely out of boyhood who needed to fight like seasoned warriors for their new King who was even younger than them.

The barkeeper placed the two mugs on the counter and left them alone. Bors knew he was a familiar face in this town, but despite that no one had heard him speak a word. He had, as he did in all the towns he had incorporated into his rotation of towns that had work for him, simply put some coins on the bar and received food, drink, and sometimes a proper room, depending on hos the innkeeper or the barkeeper or whoever took his coins felt that night.

“Shall we go back to your table or did you want to sit outside for a bit?” Bedivere asked.

There was a time, a time before, well, before the world became what it now was, where Bedivere would have ended that question with the word _spell._ It had been, when they were young, a way to ask if the other wanted to weave stories, to find a common ground that they may return to their daily lives with their footing on a common ground.

Now, though, _spell_ was reserved for the most reckless of magic, wielded only by those who were able to not only survive in the world the Battle of Camlann had unleashed but **thrive** in it. It was for those who not only hunted the beasts that had been sleeping under the ground for so long humanity either had forgotten about them or did not know about them at all, but who had found a way to thrive in this new world.

Given the size, shape, and placement Bedivere's new facial scars, visible even with his beard, Bors had a feeling which side of humanity Bedivere had found himself on.

“We could go up to my room for a spell,” Bors kept his voice quiet, “It would be considerably more quiet.”

Bedivere's other eyebrow joined the first, raised high for a fraction of a moment before Bedivere laughed, something hardy and free, the sound betraying Bedivere's nature, both inborn and learned.

“Grab your drink and lead the way,” Bedivere picked up one mug of ale, leaving the other for Bors to pick up, “We'll bring the mugs back on one piece,” Bedivere called over his shoulder to the barkeeper, who looked at Bedivere as if he were some sort off trick being played.

Bors walked up the tavern steps slowly until he heard a second set of footsteps creak on the stairs join his, then he walked as he would normally: briskly and with purpose. Still, he heard the second set keep up and hoped it was, in fact, Bedivere following him.

He spared a glance behind as he opened the door to the room he called his for the time being and sure enough, Bedivere was right there, ready to follow him.

The door shut behind them, leaving them standing in a darkness punctured only by the dim torchlight from the hall.

“Ah crap,” Bors muttered, “I have candles, just let me try to find my fire starters.”

“No need,” Bedivere told him. Bors turned back towards Bedivere was turned away again just as quickly, a ball of fire shining so brightly it seemed to stab him in the head. He turned back towards it, towards Bedivere, more slowly, more carefully this time.

“Well fuck me,” Bors muttered.

“Not my type, and even if you were, not if that's how you're asking,” there was no feeling behind Bedivere's retort, “Ah, there's your candles.”

The fire floated – _Floated!_ – to the candles, lighting all three before blinking out as suddenly as it had appeared.

“I-” Bors started to speak but there were no more words, no additional thoughts that might tell him what to say.

“I am sure had this been a work call you could have handled everything in the dark,” Bedivere said with a heavy sigh, “It's amazing, how different things are, how stark the changes in how we draw blade or magic when we know the stakes are higher than any War could have offered us.”

“You have fire magic,” Bors said and immediately regretted it. Still, the regret must not have reached down far enough to shut off his tongue, because he added, “I thought Kay had fire magic and you had your sword and shield.”

A darkness flashed through the very core of Bedivere's being and reflected in his eyes in a way that Bors could not have convinced himself it was merely a trick of the light.

“Do not,” Bedivere bit out, a plea for a type of mercy Bors did not know how to deliver but knew the roots, the thoughts of the two boys who he could not save from their own destinies threatening to surface too much to be pushed back down.

They stood there, two old friends who had indeed become strangers, no idea how to begin weaving a common ground again.

“What brings you to this town?” Bors asked. Talking about work, while often dull, was at least safe now that they both knew the other made their living in the same fashion.

“Rumors,” Bedivere's eyes were his own again, far less haunted by a past no man could kill, “There's supposed to be a critter problem ruining the sheep market not terribly far from town.”

“A **_what??_** ” Bors' voice went higher than he'd meant it to.

“Hellhounds,” Bedivere said in words Bors understood.

“Critters?” Bors couldn't let it go.

“That's all they are,” Bedivere shrugged, “critters.”

“This isn't shooting barn pests with slingshots,” Bors pointed out as if Bedivere did not know.

“No, it's shooting them with fire and then stabbing them if they get past that,” Bedivere spoke as if he were Arthur's War Marshall wrangling some particularly stubborn young Knights.

Despite himself, Bors laughed for the first time in what must have been years.

“What about you?” Bedivere asked, “What critters are you chasing down?”

“Critters,” Bors said under his breath, incredulous, “We're facing monsters unleashed by some curse that was completed when the last of the Pendragon blood was spilled on consecrated ground and you call them **_critters_** ,” he took a deep, grounding breath as if that could allow him to unhear Bedivere's name for these monsters that had shifted the understanding of the world as everyone thought they knew it, “There's a wyrm nest being built on the edge of a river and the traders are scared it's going to be a laying nest.”

“If they're building on the river there's a sick parent,” Bedivere sucked on his teeth for emphasis.

“You know,” Bors managed something close to a smile, the movements tugging at his facial muscles in ways they had not been tugged for what must have been over a decade, “I had this bastard of a War Marshall who used to tell me two well-coordinated men could fight with the force of twenty, more if they had nothing left to lose.”

“He does sound like a bastard,” the edges of Bedivere's mouth quirked up, “Hounds, then wyrms?”

“Hounds sound closer,” Bors shrugged, “I leave at first light.”

“Excellent,” Bedivere grinned in earnest this time.

Questions, stories of the missing years they both spent thinking they were the last of those who were _there_ when the Earth split open on the hills of Camlann and beasts beyond nightmares came spilling forth into a world woefully unprepared for the destruction they wrought would come later, would be allowed to happen naturally.

After all, if they brought the past back to life they may look into it and find something they may yet lose.


	2. Three's Company

Bors was awake well before the dawn, the sound of Bedivere's soft snoring too loud for the quiet he had grown used to. It was not even that anyone who normally had roommates would have called snoring, more a louder-than-waking exhale that indicated the other man was deep asleep.

Bedivere woke as soon as Bors shifted, mind alert and every other sense not far behind.

“This is why you were War Marshall,” Bors grumbled, “There is no spate between sleeping and waking for you.”

“Were that the only qualification there was and we would have had a hundred Marshalls at any given time,” Bedivere pointed out as he settled back down into the rugs stacked on his pallet. 

Bors wondered, in the back of his mind, if it was truly comfortable on the pallet or if Bedivere had, like him, had the fear that the other man would be gone before morning as if a phantom or a form of madness. It was likely a touch of both, he decided.

“Now that we're up,” Bedivere suggested, “let us grab breakfast and get to work.”

“Is your contract secure?” Bors knew there was no point in trying to get more sleep.

“Are you asking if I'll still get paid if I work with another Hunter?” Bedivere did not shy away from using the label that had affixed itself to this new class of workers.

Less noble than the Knights by far, Hunters were the last line of defense for the people but were known to do things Knights – at least in theory – would find appalling: refuse to do their job if the money wasn't there, demand rations from a village's winter stores to make up from lost funds, generally use their newfound role to take what was not given freely in far, far too many ways for their services to be contracted except in the most dire of circumstances.

Bors did not answer, yet Bedivere kept talking.

“It is,” Bedivere was on his feet and tugging on his boots already, “though I did not expect to be working with anybody.”

“For this contract?” Bors sought clarification.

“Ever,” Bedivere amended, “Have you worked with another before?”

“In the beginning,” Bors was finally on his feet, “I stayed near the fissure for near a month before it became clear there would be no salvaging Camelot or her surrounding lands.”

“Mnm,” Bedivere made a noncommittal sound, “I was beside Arthur until the end.”

“And then what?” Bors asked despite himself.

“And then I sent him off to Avalon with his sister, Morgan, the Lady of the Lake,” there was a tightness to Bedivere's voice that had not been there a moment before, “and despite Arthur having insisted I throw it back in the lake it came from, the Lady gave it back to me and told me to use it wisely.”

“You have Excalibur,” it felt foolish, saying it aloud, “You're the wielder of the sword that can only be used by the one who will reunite the lands.”

“I am,” Bedivere sighed, “though a fat lot of good wielding someone else's destiny in the form of a stabbing object has done against the critter hoards.”

“Are you really going to keep calling them that?” Bors couldn't suppress his urge to derail what little of a conversation they had managed to start.

“Yeah,” Bedivere said effortlessly, already securing his belt around his waist while Bors was still fumbling for his boots, “My horse is stabled a few buildings away.”

“It's amazing you can keep a horse in a time like this,” Bors had never felt so behind in his life, “Do you ever just. Savor the feeling of sleep and rest?”

“Once,” Bedivere snapped, “and now I have fire magic.”

The snap had been short, but Bors felt it strike his very soul. A warning not to try to dig deeper and an admission that, how ever Bedivere managed to have Kay's fire magic, Bedivere took the blame for.

It was only fair, Bors thought, and if Bedivere had touched on one of his losses so thoughtlessly, he doubted he could have kept his reaction so short and clean.

Bors managed to get the rest of his personal affects together in record time, all he owned that was not secured between his belt and tunic in a sack slung over his shoulders.

“Where are the hounds?” Bors asked.

“About half a day's ride north following the stream,” Bedivere told him, “Though, do you have a horse?”

“For now,” Bors said it like he was confessing something rather than explaining his situation with the oversized, backless chairs with legs far too delicate for how integral they were to the very fabric of society called horses, “Every time one gets a wiff of one of the hoard spilled forth from the shattering of Camelot and I'm not on it, they tend to run away.”

“I've found horses run from the magic the critters have about them,” Bedivere tugged his glove down with his teeth and shook his hand to make sure it was secure, “Find yourself a horse who's used to human – and preferably fair folk – magic and they tend to get jumpy but not go too far.”

And with that, Bors realized, Bedivere had as good as told him he had Kay's horse as well.

“And where would I find one of those?” Bors decided not to venture down the path that was asking where Bedivere got his mount.

“Write your wishes down, tie them to a stone, and throw them in a lake,” Bedivere suggested as they started heading out of the room, “If they're reasonable, they will be granted.”

“Strange the Lady would spend her magic on people like us,” Bors muttered as he followed Bedivere down hallway and then down the stairs.

“Magic is not a currency,” Bedivere spoke as if teaching a child, “It does not run out, nor does its value depreciate for having a lot of it around.”

Bors huffed, the disbelief making its way out of his head with the single, near-traitorous sound.

“Enough talk of magic,” Bedivere looked around, the gesture much more obvious than it needed to be, especially in the near-dark emptiness of the pre-dawn tavern.

There was a girl who was not quite old enough to be called a young woman at the bar, no older than Galahad had been when he first came to court. She was trying to scrub out one of last night's spills that would likely become a stain in the wood. When she noticed the Hunters, she made a small gasping sound and ran into the store rooms.

“Huh,” was all Bedivere had to say about the matter. Still, he paused by the bar as if there might be a chance of something resembling breakfast. Bors thought he heard Bedivere's stomach growl and realized that, at least at the tavern, the other man had not eaten the night before.

Bors picked up the rag the girl had left and began to scrub at the setting stain. It seemed too dark to be ale and too thin to be food. Blood, perhaps, though he did not thing the both of them would sleep through anything resulting in blood being drawn beneath their feet.

Sure enough, a handful of minutes later the girl came back with the barkeeper from last night in tow. He had clearly been asleep, still in his sleeping shirts and his entire affect groggy.

“Papa,” the girl said, “they _are_ both hunters!”

“Sweetheart,” the barkeeper did not look at anyone but his daughter, “I'm sure they are but you know there's nothing to be done.”

Something inside Bors flared to life at that particular defeat. In the span of a heartbeat, he wondered how many other Hunters they had reached out to only to be turned away because money and fame were their only motivators, wondered what this family who appeared to be running a successful business in the middle of a town with no recent attacks could fear so much this girl would fetch her father from his bed.

“There is always something to be done,” Bedivere's steady voice broke Bors from his thoughts.

The barkeeper looked Bedivere over as if trying to weigh what this newcomer was worth. He then turned his attention to Bors in a way he had not before when Bors was simply paying for food and drink and the small room that kept him out of the elements.

Still, if Bors had been able to return to the same Inn night after night, that meant something was circling the town, some force drawing them nearer and nearer to the quietude that let him sleep through the night.

“There's a cult,” the girl told them, “A cult in the cellar of the church who want to learn to harness whatever darkness gives these creatures life for their own!”

“Alexandra!” her father grabbed her by the forearm and held her tight, “You would do best not spreading rumors when these Hunters have work to get to.”

Bors looked to Bedivere, whose gaze was fixed on the barkeeper, his jaw set and eyes narrowed. Bors knew this look: this was an echo of the War Marshall who had lead Camelot to victory again and again, whose prowess on the battlefield was only surpassed by his ability to create and then execute a strategy down to the smallest moving piece.

Bors realized that, even after over a decade of not seeing anyone from a life that no longer felt like his even though it had very much happened to him, he would still follow Bedivere without hesitation.

“Please,” the girl tried to wrench free of her father's grip, “Please, we cannot have them bring these horrid creatures here!”

“Alexandra!” her father held fast, “Alexandra, please, stop this.”

“Enough,” Bedivere's simple command had both father and daughter frozen in place.

“Even if it is not the doing of a cult,” Bors realized the barkeeper had never heard him speak before last night and absolutely had not heard him speak of his work, “there are creatures and small packs getting closer and closer.”

“How long have you been in this inn?” Bedivere asked Bors.

“Near a week now,” Bors told him, “with work every day, sometimes into the night.”

“Hmm,” Bedivere frowned, a sharp thing that Bors knew held only things that could be corrected, not redeemed, “Strange, then, that so much could be less than a day's ride and yet you keep being drawn back here.”

“We would never -” the barkeeper began to shout before cutting himself off.

“No, no, not you,” Bedivere nearly waved him off, “At this close I would know if you had magic strong enough to draw a Hunter here night after night.”

Bors made a mental note to find a way to ask the extent of Bedivere's magic that would not cause the War Marshall to close himself off before anything was answered.

Bedivere appeared to be watching the barkeeper, but Bors noticed his attention was on the girl. Bors saw in her face a defiance fueled by fear. And yet, despite the fear at the root of everything, she wanted to act, to solve something she was clearly being told time and time again would not be solved. She would have been an excellent squire had they allowed women into their ranks.

“Enough of this talk inside,” Bedivere held no room for questions or arguments, “Release the girl and she decides where she goes.”

The girl was released, her forearm red in a way that threatened bruised later. Bors' frown mimicked Bedivere's as he repressed the urge to give the father even harsher marks for his temper towards his child.

Bedivere was already heading for the door. Bors followed him. The tell-tale sound of someone jumping over the bar and landing on the floor with unpracticed force followed Bors.

As soon as they were all outside, the girl said, “They killed my mom and took my brother.”

 _Well,_ Bors thought, _that at least explains why her father was unwilling to let her go and lose her, too._

“The whole town ignores it,” she continued as Bedivere walked on, presumably towards his horse, “My brother's not the only one disappeared, though. At least three people in the last week have just vanished in the night and everyone goes on like if they don't acknowledge what's happened it won't happen to them, too.”

“At night?” Bedivere asked.

“Well, I assume so,” she was doing an excellent job keeping pace, “They're all there in the day, going about their work and chores, then the next morning they're just. Not there.”

Bedivere cast a glance over his shoulder meant for both Bors and the girl.

“We'll have to hunt at night, then,” Bedivere kept his voice quiet, “Keep to yourself, Alexandra, and we will be back tonight.”

“I'm coming with you,” she informed them as if there was no way they could refuse her.

Bors' fear spiked at the thought of another child following him into impossible tasks that all too often ended in death. All the ways to refuse, to tell her to go home and wait, all the desire to never fail another person before they had a chance to know what it was to live tried to escape him at once.

“Do you have a horse?” Bedivere asked her.

“I do!” she was taking increasingly larger steps in order to keep up with them.

“If you are not in a properly saddled horse you can clearly control by the time we are at the town's gates, you are not coming,” Bedivere informed her.

She was off running in another direction in an instant.

“She's a child,” Bors pointed out.

“If she's right about the cult, the entire village will need to be evacuated,” Bedivere pointed out, “Taking them down will be much, much more difficult than any job either of us have done yet.”

“What makes you so sure?” Bors asked.

Bedivere stopped and turned around on his heels so he could look Bors in the eyes.

“Because they're going to be human.”


	3. Hounds of Fire

Bors' horse snorted as he mounted the beast, an impatient thing he'd bought two towns back for way, way less coin that he was comfortable paying for the animal. He had assumed by the price something was wrong with it – and perhaps there was, for the thing had not ran off during a Hunt or gotten itself killed in wyvern fire or met any of the number of fates his other horses had met.

Whether this one had boiled its brain from a fever as a colt or, as Bedivere had mentioned, was somehow used to magic he figured he would never know.

Bedivere was waiting for him, mounted and awake to an unholy level, just outside the stables. He gave his horse a small kick and the beast started walking. Bedivere gave him a small nod and his mount started heading towards the town's gates with no visible urging from the former War Marshall.

Sure enough, Alexandra was waiting at the gates, mounted on a horse a few sizes too big for her but clearly not having any problems handling the animal.

Bors let out a sighn so defeated it managed to draw a sideways glance from Bedivere.

“I'm ready,” she said a soon as the two men were in reasonable speaking distance, “Where are we going?”

“The farmland between the two rivers,” Bedivere told her, “where the sheep are. Or were. The details were hazy.”

“It's fastest if we take the mountain pass,” she told them, “It may not look like the maps, but I've ridden the route plenty with my brother.”

She had a sense of humble pride about her, not blinding in the way arrogance was but strong in the way that someone who, despite the small number of years she had to her name, knew they spoke the truth.

Bedivere did not glance back at Bors to consult him in silence. Bedivere had never consulted Bors before making a decision and while that made sense before, when the world was a much more simple place, Bors felt like he was being left behind when Bedivere said to Alexandra: “Lead the way.”

Still, Bors followed the girl and the War Marshall. 

Alexandra did not take long to lead them off the path, through long-abandoned quarries, over stripes of running water that were too large to be called streams and too small to be called rivers, over ground so rarely tread on that Bors worried his mount would trip over an unseen hazard and become useless, yet all three horses crossed the questionable-at-best ground without so much as nicking a rock.

Alexandra slowed her horse to a halt, giving the two riders behind her time to do the same without colliding into her. She had, Bors admitted to himself, had sufficient experience on long treks between town and farms that she knew how to lead.

“We're nearly there,” she told them, “I hope you've brought all you need to fight whatever you're up against because the sheep farms are too far from the farmhouses to restock.”

Bedivere grunted in understanding and looked ahead, clearly ready to get moving again. His horse, unlike the mounts Bors and Alexandra were using, seemed to have barely broken a sweat. Somewhere in the back of his mind, Bors swore he had seen that horse before.

“You are to stay out of the way once we get there,” Bedivere informed Alexandra.

“Understood,” the girl nodded.

Bors had expected her to put up some type of argument – the young ones who had never come face-to-face with the beasts almost always thought they could be of use in a fight.

Alexanrda urged her horse forward, and Bedivere followed while Bors followed Bedivere.

He was just relieved he was not following two people young enough to be his own child.

The sun was at its zenith when they saw the first signs of the hellhounds: earth scorched beyond saving, a spot where nothing would grow regardless of how it was tended.

Bedivere called for his companions to halt as he dismounted to examine the spot closer.

“Some bitch had pups,” he declared, “and made a den here.”

“Little shallow for a den,” Bors pointed out.

“Not for these critters,” Bedivere shook his head, “They den on the surface so the pups can get as much sunlight as possible. The whole range of hellhounds seems to draw their power from the sun, so if the pups are going to be strong, they need to be on the surface.”

“Critters,” Bors said under his breath, then louder, “How long ago do you suspect they abandoned the den?”

“I don't suspect they have,” Bedivere grunted as he climbed back on his mount, “just that the pups are old enough to start learning to hunt, and they're using the sun's peak to ensure the pups have a good hunt.”

“You know a lot about hellhounds,” Alexandra remarked.

“It's my job to know as much as possible about the critters I hunt,” Bedivere shrugged off what may have been a compliment, “They're likely to be only as far as the nearest sheep left after the slaughter they've been causing such that the den is left unattended as little as possible.”

“So what do you recommend?” Bors asked, unsure why he was deferring to Bedivere despite having faced hellhounds before.

“If either of you have to piss, piss as close to the center of the den as possible,” he said, “and then we have a slaughter of our own to tend to.”

That type of raw honesty behind how Bedivere handled things no matter how crass or grim, Bors realized, was why he followed Bedivere still.

Alexandra urged her horse on again, slower this time. Bedivere took the lead, looking more to the ground than the horizon. He was, Bors thought, looking for signs of which way the pack had gone.

Bedivere veered his horse sharply off to the side, completely off the path and into the autumn-browned grass. Suddenly, Bedivere's attention snapped towards the horizon. He pulled back his reigns so his horse stopped. His dropped the reigns, dismounted, and pulled Excalibur from where it was tied to his saddle. Alexandra's eyes went wide but she said nothing, still mounted on her own horse.

Bors dismounted as well, drawing a sword nowhere near as attention-grabbing as Excalibur. He grabbed, too, a ouch of herbs and a small pinch of fire starters.

“Alexandra,” Bedivere called over his shoulder, “if one of them comes into your sight, leave our horses and run.”

Alexandra made a sound that seemed close enough to understanding that Bedivere did not look over his shoulder or issue any more commands to the girl and, Christ in Heaven, Bors wish he'd gone first into the Grail Castle and left the boys he'd come to think of as his a similar command.

Bedivere covered ground quickly, faster than Bors thought any man had the right to at what still looked like a walk with the way Bedivere carried himself. Bors was near a run to maintain a distance of fewer than four strides behind the other man.

Bors could smell the sulfur-and-decay scent that came with most of the beasts that had crawled out of the riven land before he could see him and, judging by how Bedivere went from his impossibly fast walk to a run, so did Bedivere.

The hellhounds were not many in number so much as they were old – Bors could tell by the way deep lines of black punctured the flame-like shimmer that swirled where skin and fur would be on a more familiar hound, the closest thing to a scar these abominations could get.

The hounds must have sensed them, too, for the one with the least amount of shimmer left to show charged them, teeth like bone daggers bared and a growl Bors could feel deep within his bones covering ground faster than any hunting hound could ever come close to.

Bedivere met the beast's chest with Excalibur's flat side, more of a deflective move than one meant to injure of kill.

The beast snarled and stumbled, a sheen of brighter-than-surface shimmer erupting from where Excalibur had struck.

_The hellhounds can bleed,_ Bors realized and wondered for the briefest of moments how close Bedivere had gotten to the beasts to know they bled.

The rest of the pack came running towards their injured leader, a communal run as if they all shared the same will – and perhaps they did – as Bedivere planted his heels in what was left of the living Earth.

Bors tried to run to Bedivere's side, but Bedivere gave him a subtle sign for **hold still** that Bors still recognized from the time he'd spent training under Bedivere's sharp eye.

As the pack closed in on Bedivere – they did not seem to even register Bors' presence – the leader once again took point when the rest of the pack was at its heels and they charged as a single unit...

...only to slam into a wall of fire so very different from their own. Bedivere's partial arm was raised while Excalibur was hanging loose in his other arm, point embedded in the Earth.

Earth magic, now, Bors knew. It was the magic he had not learned so much as taken up in the same way he'd learned to breathe of keep his heart beating: it was simply there, a part of him as if it had simply been waiting to flare to life. And perhaps it had and the fissure was the catalyst, a plea from the Earth herself to stay alive and fight these monstrosities as long as he has breath is his lungs and blood in his veins.

And so, he drew from the Earth herself, rerouting her power into Excalibur so that Bedivere may be able to draw from the once-King's sword and, if Bors' hope was in fact their shared reality, draw the power from his fire magic with less effort.

As the fire wall flared brighter, Bors knew he had done the right thing.

The hounds screamed and fell back but did not stop. Even through the flames, Bors could see the pack split and run around the wall, clearly intending to flank the caster.

Bors closed the distance and stood at Bedivere's left, eyes trained on the edge of the wall, waiting for the hounds.

“I'm going to hold it until they are nearly on us,” Bedivere told them, “if they think we do not know we are coming, we have a greater chance of winning.”

Bors nodded, unsure if Bedivere could see him. He knew Bedivere, and knew the years they had passed separately since their normal was decimated with their King's last breath had not touched Bedivere's faith in Bors as a warrior.

Bors could lean on Bedivere's faith, for now.

The flame wall went down as the first hound on Bors' side was close enough to be in striking range should Bors reach forward to strike. 

Bors used his sword as a warding tool as he called on the Earth to ensnare the beasts - vines, rocks, smaller fissures not terribly unlike the one those monsters had initially crawled out of – seperating the half the pack that had come around his side of the wall.

Behind him, he could hear the sounds of the hellhounds' inhuman screams mix with Bedivere's grunts as Excalibur came into contact with the monsters.

As Bors' sword sank into the first heart's fire that sustained the beasts, the rest of the world disappeared.

It was just him, his sword, and the hellhounds bent on killing him.

He made quick work of the first three, but a fifth managed to graze his upper arm as he dispatched the fourth. While it did not hit his sword arm, the searing pain spread fast, rendering his non-sword arm useless and his mind near the same state.

“Mother,” he pleaded with the Earth herself, “lend me your strength.”

And the Earth heard his Prayer and filled him with the strength of the thousands of warriors She had tried to place as Her Champion before Him, soldiers who did not know how to Listen when it was most important and Bors lost the pain, lost the feeling of defeat that was trying to overtake what was left of his fearlessness, lost everything but his desire to win and swung again, fell a fifth and a sixth and stopped counting, let himself become his sword, become one with the Earth who found her mortal Champion at long last, only becoming Bors again when the last of the hellhounds was fallen and the supernatural screams of this pack would never again reach the ears of those who the Earth welcomed with open arms.

The first thing that came back to his awareness was Bedivere's labored breathing behind him, the other Hunter clearly beginning to feel the effects of what they had done.

“Well,” Bedivere said between breaths, “these critters won't be bothering any more sheep.”

Bors made a frustrated sound that he hoped approximated _'how can you call them critters?_ and judging by Bedivere's loud exhale that would have been a laugh had the other man had more time to recover himself, the sound had done its job.

“Back to the horses?” Bedivere asked instead of told Bors.

“If I sit down I may not get up to even make camp,” Bors admitted.

They began walking, slower this time, at a pace more human than Hunter.

And there it was, Bors thought: During a Hunt, they were something more than human – they were the protectors of those who could not protect themselves in this world that upended the status quo with the anguish breath of the King he would have sacrificed anything for. And so, even after his King's death, he sacrificed the life he might have had, let the infinite that was comprised of _what if_ and _could have_ fall away to the grim reality he had been reborn into after the fall of Camelot.

When they finally found their horses, Alexandra had all three mounts' reigns in her hands and looked worried but not panicked.

“It was loud,” she informed them, “and the smell reached even here.”

“It is done,” Bedivere's breathing was no longer labored even though Bors knew the other man had to be exhausted, “and we must move to the next contract.”

“Say,” Alexandra said as she handed each of the Hunters the reigns to their own horses, “how did you both secure a contract from my town? With all the disappearances even the mayor has been reluctant to draw any attention to...them.”

“Your fishmonger contracted me,” Bors told her.

“My contract was picked up two towns over,” Bedivere said as he swung himself onto his horse, “Yours was the closest one with an inn.”

“You'll travel days for a contract?” the girl asked as Bors settled into his saddle.

“Ever Hunters need to eat,” Bedivere shrugged as he patted his mount's neck. His mount snorted and shook its head but seemed pleased enough.

“Most Hunters only take contracts they can do in half a day or less,” she said as if the two of them did not know, “but you've been in town for near a week's worth of nights and worked through the day,” she indicated Bors with a look, “and you've traveled days for this.”

Bors did not know how to respond, how to rage against the selfishness the Hunter occupation seemed to have adopted as if it was a shield that could save them from the occupational hazards that were, ultimately, inescapable.

“If the critters stayed near towns we'd have no humans left,” Bedivere said it so effortlessly, “but if we don't ride out to do our jobs, we're still going to wind up with no people left. Bors, where's your target?”

“Downstream from the Abbey's port,” Bors told him, “Can't miss it, apparently.”

“You never would have made it back by nightfall _and_ made it to both places if you followed your maps,” Alexandra rolled her eyes, “Come on.”

And, once again, Bors followed Bedivere as the former Marshall followed the girl over land that had no trail.


	4. Unplanned, Unmoored

“I'm just saying,” Bors took a blind swing at the furious wyvern broodmother based on the sounds the creature in question was making, “that if _I_ brought the Earth magic, and _you_ brought the fire magic,” he grunted and took another swing, “then why did we not consider that the fact this thing made its nest **on the river** might mean it uses water as part of _its_ magic?”

“Oh please,” Bedivere sounded equally exhausted, “that would have precluded some forethought from either of us. And besides, it sprayed us with ink, not water!”

“You were the King's **War Marshall**!!” Bors nearly stopped tracking the sounds of the wyvern to stare in the general direction of Bedivere's voice. It would have been a much more meaningful thing if either of them could see at the moment.

But, really, how were either of them to know this one spat an inky substance? They certainly had never heard of it happening and Bors' point of contact for the contract hadn't mentioned it.

“Yeah, and were this a war, there may have been some discussion,” Bedivere's statement was punctured by the sound of his sword hitting scale and then flesh – wyvern flesh, Bors hoped. It must have been, because Bedivere continued: “This is just a very angry critter who isn't going to follow logic, thereby rendering our attempts at out-thinking it useless.”

“Then how did you know the hounds would come around your flame wall?” Bors argued.

“We killed their leader,” Bedivere said as if Bors needed reminding, “They were going to come at us regardless of what they had to go around.”

“So you just,” Bors paused to swing his sword – this time he felt it hit something, “put up a flame wall on the spot.”

“You've been on the field in the midst of the worst of battles!” Bedivere's voice was closer, “The plan is always the first casualty.”

“So you don't even bother plan – oh shit,” Bors' sword was stuck despite how hard he tugged on it.

“No no no,” Bedivere was beside him, “You don't get to say that when I can't even see you.”

“Sword. Stuck,” Bors gave it another tug and, sure enough, it was still very much stuck.

“Oh my God,” Alexandra's voice was far too close for Bors' liking, “How are you two still alive?”

“Get out of here!” Bedivere snapped.

“And just leave you two blind idiots to your fate?” she snapped, “You have my family to save after this.”

Bors supposed she had a point, but he didn't have to like it.

“The babies can't fly yet,” her voice was further away again, “but the nest is definitely in the water. I don't think even these monsters could survive being submerged in boiling water, though.”

“Bedivere?” Bors asked as if Bedivere needed prompting.

“Well, I guess hold the mother here,” Bedivere sighed, “and try not to get eaten while I find out if I can hold enough fire to _boil a river._ ”

“Try not to get eaten,” Bors said under his breath, “like that hasn't been my goal since these monsters not even God can love crawled out of the riven earth.”

Bors plunged his blade in further and was rewarded with a screech and, unfortunately for him, liftoff.

He let go of his sword, unwilling to find out what secondhand flight felt like.

“We have a problem!” Bors called out.

“We have a lot of problems,” Bedivere called back, “You're going to have to be more specific!”

A screech from the skies answered any questions Bedivere still had.

“Girl,” Bedivere addressed Alexandra, “just point me at the river and let me fall in.”

“Uh,” she almost hesitated, “Yeah, alright, fine.”

She shoved Bedivere and sure enough, he found himself under water. He had cast his sword aside on the river bank – why, he knew not. Still, he hoped – but had not tested – that whatever of Kay's magic he had been gifted in Kay's final moments extended to Kay's ability to hold his breath many times longer than would have killed a normal man.

Bedivere let the weight of his soaked clothes carry him to the bottom of the river. The river water was already washing the ink from his eyes – he scrubbed at his eyes furiously with the heels of his hand until he could open them. He scanned the river's surface – what of it he could make out – for the shadow of the nest.

He saw it and ran to situate himself right under it. He focused, tried to draw on whatever it was he drew on when he cast fire about, tried to send it upwards directly to the nest in hopes the whole process would go faster.

Bors depended on his success, and wasn't that just unfortunate.

 _Bedivere,_ a voice he knew too well, had come to an uneasy peace with never hearing again, said from somewhere inside his head, _Focus._

Instead of serving to focus him, it drew a sob from him, ripped the air out of his lungs and nearly replaced it with water.

 _ **Focus!**_ More urgent this time, as if it would work.

And damned if it didn't.

He looked up at the shadow of the nest, pulled from deeper within himself than usual, and unleashed a torrent of fire.

At first, it was doused by the river before it had a chance to come to life, but Bedivere persisted, felt the fire within him burning hot, felt the water around him become agitated, then boil. He focused that in a funnel upward, forced himself to trust Kay's magic despite having to use his vessel.

A series of water-muffled crashing sounds told him the nest had indeed collapsed and the brood was in the water with him.

Time to find out if they could swim.

Unbeknownst to him, on the river's shore Alexandra picked up his cast-aside sword and chucked it at the broodmother as she took a dive into the river.

Later – much later and only when the shock of how everything lined up despite the odds in front of the three humans involved in taking down this one wyvern – Alexandra would remark that it was as if the sword was calling to her, as if she _needed_ to take that impossible shot that drove Bors' sword into her deep enough that it hit her heart.

Bedivere came face-to-face with a broodmother filled with hell's righteous fury for only a heartbeat – he counted – before she seemed to close her eyes and ascend to the river's surface.

Bedivere took that as his cue to scrambled ashore again and see what was going on.

He scrambled ashore just in time to watch the beast's dead form float down the river, the hatchlings already carried down the same current in the same fashion.

“What was that about?” Alexandia asked, “I meant, like, set it on fire from the shoreline not...what _did_ you do, anyways? Also, you, Earth Magic, don't touch the water yet.”

“So you got that too, huh?” Bors asked.

“Shit, the sword,” Bedivere suddenly realized, “Where is my sword?”

“About that,” Alexandra said sheepishly, “I, uh, I threw it at the dragon.”

“You what?” Bedivere's voice absolutely did not go up half an octave from beginning to end of his question, “Also, it was a wyvern. A dragon has four legs and no care for familiar bonds, where wyverns are brood-bound. That this one was alone means it was either sick or the rest of its family had been picked off. I'd wager sick, though, based on how it let its young be so close to water – to easy food pickings – despite not being a swimming bunch of critters.”

“Critters,” Bors muttered before he could stop himself.

He was rambling and he knew it, but he was desperate to focus on anything besides what had just happened. Bors, despite still being blinded by whatever his face had been sprayed with, managed to give Bedivere a look caught perfectly between concerned and unamused.

“Bors, where is _your_ sword?”

“In the beast,” Bors told him.

“And mine's in the river somewhere,” Bedivere sat down in the mud, “Great.”

“I can buy a new one,” Bors said, “You, on the other hand, are going to have to go get yours.”

“Just give me a few, yeah?” Bedivere asked despite knowing he did not need to phrase it as a question, “Actually, you know what, Alexandra. Can you take a few coins from my side pouch and go get us all lunch?”

Lunch was the best idea Bors had heard in days. Alexandra nodded and left the men to their own devises.

When Bors was sure she was out of earshot and then some, he asked Bedivere: “What happened?”

“I spent some time at the bottom of the river,” Bedivere said dryly, “and now a bunch of critters are dead and floating down the river, dead.”

“That's not what I mean,” Bors crossed his arms, “Also, uh, can you let me know when the water's cool enough to wash my face?”

“Oh shit, sure,” Bedivere realized, “Actually, here, just use my shirt.” He pulled his shirt off and over his head and tried to throw it at Bors but smacked him in the face with it instead. Bedivere snickered as Bors managed to smack himself in the face instead of catch the shirt.

“If you two are done,” a voice came from the river, “I am running under the assumption you would like these back.”

“My Lady!” Bedivere exclaimed, quick to scramble up so he was kneeling on one knee.

Bors made quick work of removing ink from his left eye so he could at least open one eye and sure enough, the Lady of the Lake was half-submerged in the river, holding two swords aloft.

He supposed they had only called her Lady of the Lake because they had never thought to try to contact her anywhere else.

“We would,” Bors had either forgotten all decorum or no longer cared for it, “Thank you.”

The Lady walked onto the shores to hand them each back their swords, Bedivere still kneeling.

“You look as if you have seen a ghost,” she informed the former War Marshall. Bedivere made a strangle sound, which was met by a sad smile from the Lady and a confused look from Bors.

“Do try not to lose your swords again,” she cautioned them before walking backwards into the river, seeming to dissolve into the water.

“That was weird,” Bors decided.

Bedivere made a noise that was probably meant to be one of agreement but sat back down in the mud.

Bors resumed cleaning his face, venturing to the river's edge to re-wet Bedivere's shirt and finish the cleaning process.

“How is your face so clean?” Bors broke the silence.

“I may have boiled the ink off,” Bedivere shrugged, “Don't worry about keeping the shirt salvageable.”

“It's your shirt,” Bors shrugged as he took note of how much ink the shirt now carried.

“I don't think any of my clothes are bouncing back from this fight,” Bedivere told him, “It's weird, that it would brood in such a dangerous place for its young, and without another parent or even family member in sight.”

“We've said sick a few times,” Bors decided his face was as clean as it was going to get and sat next to Bedivere, “but you don't really believe that, do you?”

“Not really,” Bedivere grimaced, “It would have to have been wounded, too, in which case it would have not been able to fight like it did. It would have had to have had its eggs stolen and relocated to the river nest and it could not move them again to raise its young in such a dangerous place.”

“I have never heard of demons sabotaging each other,” Bors noticed aloud.

“I fear it was not any of its fellow critters who would stage such an elaborate thing,” Bedivere's grimace settled into a deep frown.

Bors nearly asked what he meant, but then realized: If it was not the monsters who set this trap, it was humans.

Suddenly, Bors was no longer looking forward to whatever food Alexandra brought back.


	5. Irredeemable Loss

Alexandra was on the more wiry Hunter's horse, and he on hers, her horse leading the way back to the village but Bedivere wanting to take the lead. It had only been a minor negotiation, but something had so clearly happened under the river that had the warrior-turned-Hunter so deeply shaken that she only found it a little difficult to part with her horse for a few hours.

The man who called himself Bedivere seemed at ease on her mount. She knew the animal had an abnormal gate – the horse trader had wanted to put him down for the crime of being born not quite right – but he was a solid work animal if you could balance yourself on him and did not ask him to draw a cart.

And yet, here was this Hunter, this stranger whose own mount's gate was so smooth and steadfast that it was almost as if it was gliding instead of running.

She'd used her mount to herd sheep before the horde had truly made it this far from where the epicenter was said to be and her father forbid her from leaving the village alone. Her father was a difficult man to argue with on the best of days, some shadow of a past she either was not alive for or was too young to remember chasing the man as the years wore down his ability to run from it.

It was well into dark when they were back in the village. Bedivere dismounted the horse without slowing the animal down. Judging by the sounds behind her, the one called Bors did the same thing. 

She slowed her unfamiliar mount down considerably before she joined the Hunters on the ground.

“They only come out at night you said?” one of them asked her – she was still trying to remember which voice belonged to which Hunter.

“Correct,” a very belated fear was beginning to creep into her awareness, “My brother, he works for the miller during the nights to keep thieves away. We had no idea he was missing until the miller came 'round the next morning demanding to know why he hadn't shown up to work.”

“Did he take the same route to work every night?” Bedivere – he turned to face her so she was sure it was Bedivere – asked her. She nodded, which must have been good enough of an answer, because Bedivere told her, “Show us.”

She lead them first to the Inn, then down the side streets she knew her brother never deviated from, for the miller was harsh on tardiness and he had always loved to wait until the last possible moment to leave for work.

Their father had been furious when he had taken the job, but the amount of business at the Inn and tavern both had not been as vibrant as they had in years prior, and so there was no sense in outright banning the extra income, even if it had been a stab at her father's pride.

“Here,” she said, “this is where we found my mother.”

Behind her, she could feel the Hunters go silent, something new entirely shifting between the men who seemed no sort of stranger to each other.

“She went looking for him,” she had never told the story alone, “and when she didn't return my father went looking too, and well...” she trailed off, the overwhelming urge to cry at the memory of how her father's roar of agony and loss and pain echoed around the town.

“My brother was the first,” she sniffed despite her best efforts not to, “and none of the others have even had someone look for them. I think they're afraid they'll end up like my mother.”

The one called Bors put a hand on her shoulder, a gesture with a gentleness she did not know a gesture could carry. 

“The basement of the church, you said,” Bedivere redirected the both of them, “How did you know the cult is in the basement of the church?”

Alexandra took a deep breath before she tried to explain what she knew.

“After my mother's body was taken away,” she found the words heavy and difficult to say, “there was a trail of blood going a different direction. I followed it to the basement of the church but I wasn't,” he voice broke, “I wasn't brave enough to go in alone and I knew no one would believe me that the Church could hold such horrors.”

“There are more horrors in a Church than in a human soul,” Bors said, each word screaming of things he had seen, burdens that would weigh his soul down even after his death, things Alexandra knew she could not even think up.

She nodded and scrubbed the tears that threatened to fall, leading them the same way the blood had taken her. The more wiry one, Bedivere, he'd hinted at being able to sense magic and if there was indeed magic at play like she was sure there was, she wanted to make sure he had every possible chance to feel something before it could be seen.

Her hope and fear alike that there was magic to be sensed came to fruition as Bedivere took off at a run with the other one on his heels. She ran after them, too, hoping despite the odds that regardless of what awaited them that her brother would still be there.

Bedivere slammed the church door open with his shoulder, a flood of light that was more likely fire pouring into the streets as the Hunters ran in without their weapons drawn.

Inside, the church pews had all been pushed aside and the altar pushed to the center of the room. The silhouette of a young man, naked and bound to the altar with what looked like tethers of fire, came into focus as Alexandra's eyes adjusted to the brightness

“Theo!” Alexandra cried. She knew that face, that frame.

She would know her brother anywhere.

Too late, she noticed the rest of the people in the room, the townsfolk she passed any time she went to market stark naked and eyes glazed over, their fury at the intrusion backed by a magic she could not feel, could not know how dangerous it was.

Her brother showed no sign of recognition, no change in the rise and fall of his chest.

Still, that meant he was alive, and as such there was a chance the Hunters would save him.

“ **Get back!!** ” Bors bellowed, one arm thrown out to block her from hurling herself at her brother. She struggled against the arm, then tried to step around it only to be blocked again.

“Let me see him, let me see him!” she cried as she struggled harder.

“When this is over,” Bors promised her as he pulled her into him, her face buried in his chest, his grip on her to tight she knew she could not escape.

The air around her got hot – almost too hot to bear – as screams pierced the air and then stopped.

Bors' heart was racing and his breathing in unsteady increments, feeding Alexandra's own fears as he still refused to let her go. A smell she did not know but had a guess as to its cause burned her nose, threatened to make her vomit the little food she'd had since she'd left that morning.

“Bedivere?” Bors finally asked, the unsteadiness in that single word, the fear in the way he uttered the other Hunter's name striking a fear into Alexandra's soul she had never known before.

“I'll go check the basement,” Bedivere's voice was different, “there may be more.”

Bedivere's footsteps receded and Bors finally let her go.

She turned around the see what was left of the church – embers still burning on the remnants of the pews, the naked townsfolk struck dead, burned but faces contorted in pain and terror untouched by burns.

 _Such that they may be identified,_ Alexandra realized in mute horror.

She staggered to the altar, to Theo. No longer bound, he still remained unmoving, the rise and fall of his chest becoming less noticeable with each breath.

“No,” she pleaded with anyone who might be listening, “No, Theo, I found you, I brought Hunters, you can't -” the sob that threatened to undo her composure what seemed like a lifetime ago escaped. She sank to her knees, hands up as far as she could manage, fingertips clinging the altar's edges, desperate to remain as close to her brother as she could manage.

Bors was beside her, then holding her against him, offering a port in the storm that was – whatever this was, words and thoughts failing her. She sobbed and sobbed, the comings and goings of the mayor and other townsfolk escaping her notice entirely.

Not terribly far away from her, Bedivere explained that the cult was attempting to siphon magic from people with latent abilities to make themselves stronger and they were investigating the magical disturbances when the cult's ritual backfired.

She was oblivious to how easily Bedivere changed the details of how the cult members were so badly burned while their victims were untouched by the flames. She had no idea that they had indeed arrived in time to save some, did now know how many funerals there would be in the coming days and weeks, how many more funerals there would have been had she not lead them here.

Bors eventually managed to coax her back on her feet.

“I have to bury him,” she refused to leave her brother there, could not imagine leaving him like that, the deep burns where the ropes made of fire had bound him for likely the entire weeks he had been missing, ribs exposed, a sheen of sweat making him look even more like a mockery of the man he was supposed to be.

“We will,” Bors told her, “We will bury him.”

And, for reasons she could not explain or understand, she believed him.


	6. Let's Go

Bedivere watched as Alexandra placed the last stone over her brother's grave. The young woman had let her tears fall freely as she helped them gather and place the stones. He was put to rest next to their mother, in a small graveyard just outside the city.

“It's not fair,” she stepped back to kneel properly at the foot of the twin graves, “that you both had to die, and for what? Some power-hungry magicians who thought they could harness the magic of others such that they could in turn harness the magic of the beasts that plague the lands we might have loved?”

There was a righteous fury that mingled with her eloquence that reminded Bedivere of those he had seen mourn their brothers on the eve after a battle, not enough stones to cover the dead and not enough men left to carry them home.

He and Bors let her mourn, let her words come to a natural end – or at least as natural of an end as it could – and kept watch. While he doubted, hoped, that there was a watch to keep, it still felt like something he had to do.

She finally rose to her feet and turned back towards them. Her eyes were red and there were trails of fallen tears down both cheeks, but there was a fury about her that was not there before.

“I'm coming with you,” she said, “Where ever you two are going, I am coming with you.”

“Alexandra,” Bors finally called her by her name, “we have not even discussed if we are going together.”

“I don't think we have much of a choice,” Bedivere cast a brief glance at Bors, “I'd put my own name on the line that this cult is not an isolate happening,” he scoffed, “were that it was worth anything.”

Bors made an unhappy sound but did not argue.

“I don't know much about these beasts,” Alexandra admitted, “and I'm no Hunter. But I'm still coming with you.”

Bedivere looked at Bors in earnest this time, wondering if the memories of how he tried to watch over Galahad and Percival on their shared Quest for the Holy Grail still waited on the surface, if the rage that Bors had turned inward for his perceived failures were threatening to unmake the only survivor of that quest again as this barely not a child stared them down while declaring she was going to decide her of fate.

“If you're right,” Bors said carefully, “then we will need to find a way to both identify these cults and still Hunt.”

“I think,” Bedivere still stood as if he was keeping watch, “that if we find a town in which we have enough contracts to stay more than a night, we may be able to do just that.”

“If,” Alexandra's voice wavered before she started again, more sure of herself, “If they were looking to harness the magic of monsters _and_ were drawing them close to people, then there must be something about both the magic of monsters and the magic of humans that can work together.”

“It's generally been thought to be different,” Bors sighed, “but you have a good point.”

“Is there a way we could get like,” Alexandra chewed on her lip as she searched for the correct word, “Could we get a history? Or any sort of information that may be helpful?”

“Camelot,” Bedivere frowned, “but Camelot's destroyed.”

“Is there anywhere else?” Alexandra's voice was the voice of someone trying to find hope but not expecting to succeed, “Another castle, or a city archive somewhere?”

“Well,” Bors looked to Bedivere, “there is one place, if it's still standing.”

“Oh no,” Bedivere breathed as he realized exactly where Bors was suggesting.

There was, he supposed, a lot of merit to Bors' point. There was only one place he had not been since the fall of Camelot that may yet have familiar faces, might be able to help them understand the magic at work here.

“Yeah,” Bedivere relented, “we can go to Orkeny.”

“Where?” Alexandra had never heard of the place.

“It's a long way north and a hard ride even before we get to the boats,” Bedivere told her, “and if we survive the trek we – well, the two of us at least – may yet be killed at the castle gates.”

“Doesn't life with these critters,” Alexandra used Bedivere's word for the beasts, “come with a high risk of death anyways?”

“Pack only what your horse can handle,” Bedivere told her, “We leave today.”

Alexandra nodded and started back towards the village at a jog.

“She's barely beyond childhood!” was the first thing Bors said once Alexandra was out of sight.

“She's already lost her mother and her brother!” Bedivere countered, “and was invaluable against the wyvern!”

Bors knew Bedivere spoke the truth, had seen how well Alexandra could handle her own.

“I can't do it again,” Bors' confession was so quiet that Bedivere nearly missed it, “They, those boys. I failed them. I cannot fail another, not after everything we both saw at Camlann.”

“If we do not let her join us she will follow,” a deep sense of sorrow accompanied Bedivere's words. Bors crossed his arms but did not argue further.

They – the three of them – had already testified to what happened in the church. Alexandra had been the first to identify the cult members and the town had lost a number of their most respected people.

Alexandra had spat on the miller's corpse.

She returned to them after a time, all three of their horses trailing behind her, saddle bags already packed. She came to a stop in front of them and released the reigns of all three horses.

“Let's go,” she said as she mounted her horse, “Let's go find out of there is anything that can help us in this land you call Orkney.”


	7. Orkney

Alexandra had learned one during on her trek to Orkney so far: She hated boats.

The hard ride through the mountains, the alternate routes they were forced to find as a result of the spread of the the riven earth that heralded Camelot's downfall, the boring days in Inns and taverns while one of the Hunters took a contract, those things she could handle.

Even the way she thought her own skin might crawl away from her body when she saw the black tendrils of black earth that had began to split open, barely whispers of a thing, but so, so dark that she knew they could only be the things that spat out more of the hoard paled in comparison to what her insides did as the boat rolled in pitched in the waters as dark as the night's sky, an endless void of saltwater that threatened to steal life and soul of anyone unfortunate enough to find themselves within their reach.

She had not gotten much in terms of information from either of the hunters. She had pieced together they both once held a much higher station and still held themselves to those standards. Something besides the horde haunted them, drove them to choose sacrifice where other men, even Hunters, would have jumped for much more comfortable options.

There was one night, before they'd found a captain willing to take them where they needed to go, when the rain had been so horrible that even the horses refused to go on in the fresh, slippery mud and she'd dropped all three shares of dinner in the mud because she was shivering so badly and the Hunters were trying to set up something resembling a shelter, and still they had gotten another ration for her but not them.

She hoped she learned to be more like them sooner than later.

Still, when their ship reached shore again she nearly ran off the docks to feel the soil under her shoes again.

“It takes some getting used to,” Bors told her as he handed her the reigns to her horse, “Good news is we do not have much longer to travel.”

She took a deep breath and nodded.

“We'll stay the night at port,” Bedivere seemed to just be deciding on that, “restock on food, see about getting warmer clothes before the winter gets here proper.”

Was it nearing winter already? Alexandra had lost track of time, of seasons. She'd heard it was colder in the north, so winter may come early here.

She walked her horse through town, the Hunters moving as if they belonged there, navigating the crowds with ease even with their horses behind them.

They settled for an Inn just off the main market, the one room they would share containing a small fireplace to keep the space warm.

“We will need about two weeks' worth of food,” Bedivere said as she knelt in front of the fire, savoring its warmth, “and, Bors, we're both going to need our hair woven.”

She had heard of the woven hair of warriors before the hoard, when men slaughtered each other over things now considered trivial. The shape of the weaves had meaning, a language warriors spoke to one another. The Hinters wove each other's hair and, though they both started slowly, measured each movement before making it, there was still a familiarity that confirmed her suspicions they had server alongside each other in whatever lives they lead before this one.

She had wondered, sometimes, if men's desire to battle would return despite the beasts. After the evil she had seen, after what had taken her brother and mother from her, she believed it possible.

She did not try to fight the Hunters when they told her to stay in the Inn and rest, the bone-deep exhaustion that had settled in after getting off the boat driving her to relish in the stillness of sitting in front of the fire.

They came and went all day and into the night, comparing purchases and evaluating what they still needed. Eventually, though, both Hunters settled in for the night, Bors on the floor and Bedivere on the table, leaving the bed for Alexandra.

And, while she did think it a waste of a bed, she felt she needed to learn their fortitude through experience and fell asleep on the floor in front of the fire.

When she awoke the sun was up and Bors and Bedivere both had found their way to the bed, Bors sprawled out and Bedivere's body somehow sideways, laying across the pillows instead of next to Bors.

She wondered how often they had slept like this, perhaps with twice their number in even smaller spaces.

She went about packing the new supplies into their bags, trying not to wake them. Despite her efforts, they both soon joined her.

After they were satisfied with how the bags were divided, they ate their first meal as quickly as they could, the last meal they would not cook themselves for at least two weeks.

The days blurred together, endless expanses of road and forest and mountain, trails overgrown in parts, the area abandoned.

She'd heard of areas devoid of people, of nature moving back in as families sought the safety of larger cities with their own guards and militia that did not have to rely on a Hunter being in the right place at the right time but to see how nature overrode human presence was another thing entirely.

Each night was somehow colder than the last. Even with the fur-lined clothes the Hunters had gotten her, she found herself shivering under the blankets that could never be thick enough to help her. Eventually, all three of them had taken to sleeping huddled together, what warmth could be gained by proximity to another a blessing.

When the were at last in sight of the castle, Alexandra nearly kicked her horse into a run, the prospect of being inside again nearly overruling the nervousness she felt from the Hunters.

When at last they were at the gates, the Hunters dismounted and stood, posture downright intimidating.

Alexandra stayed on her horse and waited for some sort of cue.

“Sir Bors and Sir Bedivere of Camelot request an audience with your King,” Bedivere said to the guard.

Despite herself, Alexandra let out a small surprised gasp.

The guard disappeared into one of the halls.

The three of them waited in silence.

When the guard returned, he said to them: “There are those here who will be able to tell if you are lying about who you are. If you are, the punishment it death. And so, if you are untruthful, leave now with your lives.”

Nobody moved.

“Very well,” the guard seemed skeptical, “The girl, who is she.”

“My name is Alexandra,” she told them, “I seek to become a Hunter.”

She had not known that was what she wanted to do with her life until she said it, but now that the words had escaped her lips there was nothing she knew with more truth to it.

“She rides with us,” Bedivere told the guard.

“Leave your horses here,” the guard told them, “and follow me.”

Alexandra followed the Hunters, who followed the guard, through a series of halls that felt more like a maze than anything else, the walls adorned with highly detailed tapestries worth more than her life. They both decorated the corridors and kept the chill out, she noticed.

Finally, the guard lead them into a room with a ceiling higher than Alexandra had ever seen, torches adorning the walls that made the room near as bright as a clear day.

At the far end of the room a man who might have been handsome at the peak of his life who had been worn down by the duty still carried himself as if he and he alone was to be answered to. Next to him sat a woman not much younger than him but equally proud despite her exhaustion. They both say on metal chairs with tall, ornate backs that did not look comfortable to sit on.

Beside them stood another woman, a gentleness about her that Alexandra could not help but feel hid something much deeper, much more pointed if not downright dangerous.

“Bedivere!” the standing woman cried, “Bedivere, you're alive!”

She ran across the room and caught Bedivere in a fierce embrace. Bedivere seemed to freeze a moment before he whispered, “My Queen.”

“And Bors!” the woman exclaimed as she released Bedivere and touched Bors' face, surprise and relief and something like loss about her, “You are both alive, and here after so long.”

“It's them,” the man – likely the King – told the guard, his tone short, “Leave us.”

“Sir,” the guard and bowed and left, shutting the door behind him.

“Guinevere,” Bedivere breathed, “You are alive.”

“I could say the same for you,” Guinevere looked as if she might cry.

“Agrivane,” Bedivere addressed the King, “How are you alive?”

“What do you mean?” Agrivane demanded.

“The earth split open when the last of the Pendragons fell,” Bedivere told everyone though it was directed at Agrivane, “and yet, you're here.”

“You were the smart one,” Agrivane's face twitched, “I am sure you can put it together.”

Alexandra presumed that this Agrivane had been a bastard child, raised as a Pendragon when he was not of their blood.

“You remember my wife, Laurel,” Agrivane gestured beside him.

“I do not remember them,” Laurel told Agrivane pointedly, “Were that you would keep me from courtly affairs until you became regent, and even then kept me here.”

“Only to spare you from how cruel court was,” there was something frightened behind Agrivane's anger that made Alexandra feel sorry for the King.

“We have time to air grievances of a life none of us can return to later,” Guinevere told the King and Queen alike, “Bors and Bedivere are here, alive. We are not the last of the Old Guard.”

Alexandra felt there were several conversations going on but only one she was privy to.

Agrivane made a disappointed noise but did not argue with Guinevere.

“Tell us,” Laurel said, “what brings you here?”

“We seek information,” Bors said, “Hopefully access to whatever archives you have.”

“Information,” Laurel drummed her fingers on the edges of her arm rests, “What would two Knights of Camelot turned Hunters need access to lesser archives for?”

“You know Camelot lies in ruins,” Bedivere snapped and then recoiled, surprised by the harshness of his own words.

Even Boors took half a step back, the tone a surprise to even him.

“You sounded like -” Agrivane started to say, but stopped short, the cruelty etched in the lines of his face fading into something of terror and concern for a man he tried to pretend he had no care for.

Everyone stared at Bedivere as if he held secrets that not even he knew he carried.

“Oh,” Guinevere said softly before taking Bedivere's chin in her hands so she could look him in the eyes, “Oh Kay, what have you done?”


	8. Bedivere's Tale

They sat clustered at one end of the high table in the otherwise empty hall. Agrivane sat at the head of the table, though Laurel and Guinevere flanked him so closely it seemed they all may have shared the seat of honor. Bors and Bedivere sat on either side of the trio and Alexandra sat next to Bors.

“You were both there,” Guinevere asked them, a small scrap of cloth clutched to one finger, “when Camelot...fell.”

“Aye,” Bors nodded, “though I was closer the the split when it happened and spent near a month on Camelot's lands, I believe Bedivere spent even more time near Camelot after her final days.”

Everyone looked to Bedivere, who looked deeply uncomfortable.

“Those who still stand with us will be along in the next few days,” Guinevere addressed Bedivere directly, “and will want answers, information. You can give it to us that we may pass it on, or you may give it to an even greater number.”

Agrivane shuddered, knowing the blood magic the former Queen of Camelot used to recall those so few in number who once all rode under the same banner.

“I was one of those who sat vigil with Arthur,” Bedivere lowered his eyes, “It was myself, Kay, Morgan, and Dagonet with him at the very end. As Arthur drew his last breath the castle itself shook and the smell of rot and brimstone became inescapable. We fled the castle with Arthur's body to avoid the stones collapsing on us only to be met outside by a smoke so thick it blocked the midday sun.”

“The earth itself seemed to weep,” Bors added, “as she split open and those monsters began crawling out from the void-like chasm.”

Bedivere nodded. “The Lady of the Lake came to us not long after, told us that what we were seeing meant the last of the Pendragon bloodline was gone from this like and the critters who had been sealed away from this world were no longer sealed away.”

“So the Pendragon bloodline was the only thing keeping them sealed?” Laurel asked as the same time Agrivane went, “Critters?”

“Yes, thank you, it is a little weird,” Bors said to Agrivane. Bedivere rolled his eyes.

“Her implication was that, yes, the Pendragon bloodline was its own sort of guardianship that kept the seal from breaking, or perhaps a curse from being completed, I wasn't entirely sure and wasn't quite in a head space to ask questions,” Bedivere said with a heavy sigh, “Morgan went with her brother, walked right through the Lady's portal and disappeared, but not before handing me Excalibur and telling me to use it wisely.”

“You have Excalibur?” Agrivane's eyes went wide and he looked at the nearest window as though he may jump out of it.

“Like, the Excalibur of folk tales?” Alexandra asked, “I threw THE Excalibur into a wyvern?”

“You did what?” Agrivane looked at the girl as if finally considering she wasn't just there as a sort of living decoration.

“So you're here,” Guinevere tried to keep her words gentle as she redirected everyone's attention, “though you said Kay and Dagonet sat vigil with you.”

Bedivere seemed to deflate at that, the former War Marshall who had survived a decade, give or take, as a Hunter in this land that gave no favor to men suddenly a mockery of the proud Knight who'd seen Camelot's successes in the face of any odds. There was a defeat he had seen that changed the very core of who he was and what he believed in, and Guinevere had clearly reopened the resulting wound.

“Dagonet rode out to try to evacuate as many of the surrounding villages as he could,” Bedivere did not pick his head up as he spoke, his gaze unfixed on the table in front of him, “Kay and I stayed behind in hopes we could find a way to either fix the riven earth or stem the flow of critters.”

Agrivane and Bors both made a sound of disbelief that, even during a story like this, Bedivere kept calling the horde **critters** but decided against saying anything as Laurel cleared her throat.

“We spent near a year in the ruins of Camelot with not much more than the questionable remains of the store rooms and whatever we could catch to eat,” Bedivere's hand gripped the edge of his seat so tightly his knuckles turned white, “We had not made much progress but by the time we realized there was nothing we could learn, riding out to help with or even just check on evacuations made no sense, so we stayed even longer.”

Bedivere paused, some custom blend of unpalatable emotions playing over his features before he was able to speak again: “We'd been fighting over the best course of action. Camelot was the only home either of us had known since Arthur had found himself the boy-King and just leaving it behind without at least _something_ resembling a plan wasn't an option for either of us. What exactly the plan should be was where we differed.”

Bors frowned and walked around the table to sit next to Bedivere. That seemed to help Bedivere ground himself, because he continued once more: “I was of a mind that we should try to kill as many of the critters as we could, see if it kept villages whose most prized fighters had never killed anything more vicious than a hungry stag any safer in this new world. Kay thought we should go south, cross the sea and use Excalibur's easily recognizable status to rally an army to try to slaughter them. I argued that even if we made it and even if we were believed, that would be more time away from our own people.

“After weeks of bickering that was beginning to turn into anger between us, I suggested we spend some time in different parts of the ruins to see if we could find anything on our own. I knew it was just to try to clear my head, see if some time not right next to each other helped cool either of our tempers,” Bedivere paused again, “I spent the time in what was left of the armory, trying to make sense of the weapons and armor, see if there was anything salvageable. I was taking my first nap since before the fall when one of the ice dragons found me and tried to turn me into a snack.

“Kay – he must have heard the commotion because the next thing I knew he was **right there** , wielding his fire against the dragon, planted so firmly between me and it with no fear for himself. The dragon, it swung at him with its claws first, destroyed his entire body in one motion. I...I screamed, and I felt fire all around me, felt the heat consume what was left of the armory.

“When I had any sort of awareness again, I was in the charred ruins of the armory with a dead ice dragon atop Kay's body, only one of his hands visible. I tried for days to dig him out, to at least give him a proper burial but there was too much stone and I had to move on before lack of food and water killed me, too.

“It wasn't until much, much later I realized the fire that ruined the remains of the armory and, presumably, killed the dragon came from me, not Kay. It took a long time to be able to channel it as I wanted to rather than have it, well, there were some fires that went well beyond critter killing.”

With that, Bedivere seemed to finish his story. He was pale, his eyes haunted and, really Agrivane could not blame him, could not imagine someone such as Kay ever falling in battle, even against a dragon.

Bors put one hand on Bedivere's upper arm and squeezed gently. Alexandra seemed to wipe at her eyes once before looking at Bedivere like she wanted to help but was so, so lost as to how.

Guinevere hugged Bedivere and told him, “It seems you got more than Kay's Magic.”

“I had a feeling,” Bedivere said it like a confession, “Not until the day before we crashed the cult in Alexandra's town, but I had a feeling.”

“You what the what?” It was Laurel's turn to be taken by surprise by whatever story these two once-Knights would wind up weaving together.

“We were hunting a wyvern whose nest was on a river,” Bors picked up for Bedivere, “it spat something like ink over both our faces before attacking so we were going in blind.”

“I had Alexandra push me into the river,” Bedivere said, “I had not tested my ability to hold my breath, and while I can do it as Kay did, I...nearly did not. But I _heard him_ telling me to get a grip on myself and focus.”

“You set the river on fire, didn't you?” Guinevere sounded impressed.

“Boiled it, but yes,” Bedivere nodded, “Alexandra's suggestion, actually.”

“I meant for him to like, set the nest on fire because they seemed averse to water,” Alexandra interrupted, “not to sink to the bottom and disappear for several minutes!”

“Yeah, that's a Kay move,” Agrivane pointed out. Bors and Alexandra glared at him.

“The adult seemed to know he was there and the one responsible and tried to dive in,” Alexandra told everyone, “Bors was still blinded and his sword was stuck in the, uh, critter's chest so I picked up Bedivere's sword from the river bank and just kind of threw it and it hit Bors' sword and the thing was dead in moments.”

“How long had you been traveling with them when that happened?” Laurel asked the girl.

“Oh, we just met that morning,” Alexandra's cheeks took on a hint of color, “My town had a cult problem and I wasn't about to let them out of my sight after they agreed to help.”

“How long have you two been fighting together, then?” Agrivane asked the Hunters.

“That morning,” Bors told him.

“I took a contract a few towns over,” Bedivere added, “and that town was the closest to the target location with an Inn. I wanted a night's sleep in a bed before I took on a whole pack of critters.”

“And I'd been doing a series of contracts in and around the town,” Bors said.

“When I saw them leaving together that morning,” Alexandra sounded terrified but kept talking, “I knew I had to say something. I'd hoped to get my father to ask them, to pay them, but he refused and he,” she shook her head as if to clear it, “He wasn't happy. So I left and went with them, instead.”

“If we said no she would have just followed,” Bedivere wore a sad sort of smile, “She's been invaluable.”

Alexandra looked proud of herself.

“Okay, cult, though,” Guinevere said as if the trio needed a reminder of what they were supposed to be talking about.

“They would take people,” Alexandra's pride disappeared and a haunted look replaced it, “My brother was among the first, and they killed my mother for trying to look for him. I found the cult by following a blood trail from the spot my father found her body, but no one else would even mention the disappeared. I thought there was no hope until...” she looked across the table at Bors and Bedivere, “I had to take my chance.”

“So the three of you came together on the same day and decided to travel here together,” Laurel looked between them, “I feel like there are a few steps missing.”

“The cult,” Alexandra's voice trembled but he kept her gaze straight ahead, eyes full of fury such a young soul had no right to have to have learned, “They were in the middle of a ritual using my brother's body, barely keeping him alive while leeching latent magics from him to take as their own. Bedivere...Bedivere took care of them.”

“There were some kidnapping victims who survived,” Bedivere added, not elaborating on how he took care of the cult.

At a base level, everyone knew, anyway.

“My father,” Alexandra swallowed hard, “did not even help bury my brother. There was nothing left for me in my town and I...what they were doing, it was just so _wrong._ I want to see every last of those critters scrubbed from the face of the earth so people like them never get to learn how to siphon those magics, too.”

“You think that was their end goal?” Guinevere was quick to ask.

“We know the wyvern didn't build the nest on the river,” Bors' voice was level despite the challenge behind his words.

“Bedivere,” Alexandra faced the man she was addressing, “My father, he had magic, didn't he?”

“Some, yeah,” Bedivere nodded, “I do not know if he was aware of it, but he had it.”

“And my brother had latent magic, apparently,” Alexandra frowned, “Do I have magic?”

“None that I can sense,” Bedivere tried to deliver the news gently. Alexandra looked only mildly disappointed.

Bors went back to his seat next to her.

They were interrupted by a guard running into the hall. Bedivere and Bors were the first on their feet, hands already reaching for their swords.

“Sir Bertilak has returned!” the guard announced, “And cares nothing for formalities so I hope all is prepared for his return.”

“Bertilak?” Bedivere and Bors asked at the same time.

“Who?” Alexandra asked.

“He would be first,” Guinevere said quietly.

“You may go,” Agrivane dismissed the guard and added, “Thank you,” after Laurel elbowed him in the ribs.

“Who?” Alexandra asked again.

“He's,” Bedivere said with a bone-weary sigh, “He's a god.”

Alexandra's face mirrored the shock Agrivane still felt when it was brought into focus a god had declared his allegiance to whatever rag-tag operation he had become the face of.

Whatever that was, really, he felt was going to come into equally sharp focus soon.


	9. Return, Return

Bertilak came close behind the guard, his legs indicating he was at a walk but the rate at which he covered ground more akin to the speed of a run.

“You summoned me back?” His voice was like thunder, reverberating off the walls, shaking the very core of everyone's soul, “What news?”

“My Lord,” Guinevere stood up and offered him a small bow, “You may remember Sirs Bors and Bedivere.”

Bertilak came to a halt and looked at the two in question, his face shifting from a sort of terrified anger to awe.

“You could have lead with _The Earth's Champion has arrived in our keep_ ,” he told the three at the head of the table.

Everyone looked at Bors.

“The what?” Agrivane asked, voice so full of disbelief that the root of the sentiment was clearly directed at his own failure to recognize this first.

“I, well,” Bors raised one hand to the back of his neck and scratched at it absently, “I may have been next to the chasm when it formed.”

“Next to?” Bertilak finished crossing the hall and came to a standstill next to Bors. He took Bors' chin in his hand and stared into the Hunter's eyes. “Ah, yes, I see it. You should not have survived such a thing.”

“I am fairly certain I am alive,” Bors sounded unimpressed.

“I do not think you understand,” Bertilak let his hand drop back to his side, “the darkness these creatures have crawled out of kills the gods themselves if it swallows them. You're human.”

“I am aware,” Bors was still unimpressed, “That would explain the earth magic, though.”

Bertilak gave Bors a look as if to say, _You think?_

“So the Earth chose you as Her Champion,” the formality Bertilak was using was made obvious by the weight each word carried as he said it, “How long did you spend near the spot where the beasts crawl from?”

“About a month,” Bors said, “It was not long after the Battle of Camlann had ended and I had assisted the archers in their final duties. I was hoping to see who was left when,” he went quiet for a moment, “when the ground opened up and the bodies of the dead who laid where the split happened fell into the chasm. A smoke blacker than smoke should be came furling out and up, filled my lungs and it was all I could do to get to a place where I could breathe again. Once I had enough air to look, the...beasts....were beginning to crawl out. Still, I wanted to try to make it to Camelot. After about a moon's span, it was clear they, too, wanted to get to Camelot and I am only one man. I can take down small groups on the best of days, but the sheer volume...”

He trailed off again and looked at Bedivere as if trying to ask the other man what he'd been through, how he was able to survive like that for an entire year.

Bedivere gave no answers.

“The magic, at first, I thought it was a trick or some sort of madness resulting from how close I had been to **it** ,” Bors shivered, “But there came a point where I realized it was very much me doing the magic, and after that I realized I needed to learn to do it consciously. It took near two years of practice, but I felt confident with these strange magics to be able to call on the Earth to aid me without having to call on her consciously.

“After a while, I began to speak to the Earth, address her as if she was my own Mother,” he closed his eyes so he could focus more on the words as he said them, “and now it's as if it's always been a part of me, as if the decades before were someone else's life that I simply have memories of.”

Bertilak made a pleased sound as Bors finished her story.

“I tried to return to Camelot after Camlann,” Guinevere told everyone, “Arthur...he seemed to know it would be his last stand and he wanted me to take refuge during the battle such that I could return and reclaim the court after the carnage had past. But when I tried...” For the first time since their arrival, Bedivere saw her composure falter, “I could not find a route in that was not...almost guarded with those beasts. And so I went north, trying to find if any of our allies were still standing.”

“She arrived here perhaps a week after we first heard of the,” Laurel paused, “critters.”

“Oh no,” Agrivane's face fell, “You, too?”

“It takes some power away from them,” Laurel shrugged and continued, “She was exhausted and had clearly learned where to strike the critters to kill them, but nevertheless undaunted by her solo flight here.”

Everyone paused and Bertilak took a seat next to Alexandra, who made a small, easily missed squeaking noise.

“How many of us are there?” Bedivere seemed to have the wherewithal to remember to ask, “The way you said it when we first got here, I though we'd number six, but now we are seven with more on the way if I'm not mistaken.”

“Should they all arrive, there are three others,” Guinevere said, “though I wish to not speak their names until they are here.”

Everyone shot her a curious look but it was Alexandra who said, “So you do not distract their souls from their task,” very quietly. Guinevere nodded.

“You have family from Ireland?” Camelot's Once-Queen asked the young woman, who nodded.

It was a small secret, that Guinevere was from Ireland, not Rome as was commonly believed, yet at this small, practically sacred gathering, she betrayed the rumors and let the truth breath for once.

“It may take some much longer than others,” Agrivane told everyone, “For now, though, please, rest, eat, warm yourselves.”

Alexandra's face lit up at the urging to warm herself. Bors face softened, clearly thinking of the two young men he'd once traveled with and the things they'd weathered together.

“Before you three do that,” Bertilak was staring at Bedivere intently, “Bedivere, Kay, how do you two feel about being separated such that you can work alongside each other again.”

“Pretty sure they did more than that,” Agrivane said before he could stop himself. Laurel cuffed him on the back of the head. “What? It deserves to be recognized.”

“You try to be nice to me once and no one believes it,” Bedivere said with a small laugh, “Can you do that? How?”

“You think I walk around my own home like this?” Bertilak gestured to himself, “Gods can weave bodies, no problem. Usually the only holdup is the availability of a soul to put it in.”

“Yes,” Bedivere nearly rushed to say, “If it means I – you – we – if Kay can be brought back, I'll do whatever it is I need to.”

“Come,” Bors said to Alexandra, “Let us get our bags settled and a fire started.”

“But I want to see,” Alexandra offered no true resistance as Bors shepherded her out of the hall. 

Guinevere offered Bedivere a small, sad smile before heading out of the hall, Agrivane and Laurel not far behind her.

When they were alone in the hall, Bertilak told Bedivere: “You may lose your magic.”

“I know,” Bedivere did not flinch or hesitate, “You can do it, though?”

“Of course I can,” Bertilak would have taken the question as an offense any other time.

“Thank you,” Bedivere meant it, “For...whatever you're about to do, and for whatever has convinced you to be here, fighting, rather than safe in whatever world you hail from.”

“Many, many moons ago,” Bertilak said with a smile that seemed a private things, “a young Knight taught me about how much more humanity understands the value of life than the gods do. The least I can do for his memory is help the people he loved so deeply.”

Bedivere made a sound of sympathy and gave a small nod.

“Close your eyes,” Bertilak told him, “Just. Trust me. You do not want to see the weaving process.”

Bedivere trusted him on that part, but still asked, “What will he look like?”

“I will use your memory,” Bertilak said without any effort behind the idea, “Now, keep those eyes _closed._ ”

Bedivere closed them even tighter, but could still feel every part of him come alive, a burning pull searing just below his skin, a bright white flash of pain burning across the backs of his eyes. He may have screamed, he wasn't sure, but he felt himself fall to the floor, the cool stone a sharp contrast to everything else he felt.

He could not have said how long the burning and pain and _pull_ lasted, but he could have told anyone it had not receded when he heard a voice he assumed he would never hear again.

“Well fuck me,” Kay said, “You really did it.”


	10. Bertilak's Story

“Wouldn't be the first time we've fucked in a feast hall,” Bedivere said as he forced himself to his feet, “Holy shit, Kay.”

He embraced the man who, despite the spots of blood that seemed to have no wound behind them, looked just as Bedivere remembered him.

“I am so, so sorry,” Key held Bedivere tight, “for everything.”

“Don't be,” Bedivere's voice was muffled, his face buried in Kay's skin, “Don't be.”

Bertilak made a pleased yet sad sound. “I'll leave you two to catch up,” he told the pair as he, too, left the feast hall.

He took a series of winding hallways until he came to the room he knew the two Queens who called Castle Orkney home used when they needed to come up with a plan but also knew time was not on their side. He did not knock or hesitate before he entered, and sure enough Guinevere and Laurel were huddled over a map on the room's single table. Agrivane sat in the corner. To the uninitiated, he seemed either half-asleep or bored, but in truth he was focusing on what the two Queens had to say.

“He'll likely be near two weeks,” Laurel was drumming her fingers on the edge of the map, “unless he did not follow his own itinerary.”

“Both are equally likely, with him,” Guinevere sighed, “If he is not back in two and a half weeks we will have to press forward without him.”

“It will give the others time to rest,” Laurel admitted, “And the newcomers some time to get used to the idea that we, well, all exist.”

“It is strange that it is only now we have even thought that there may have been individuals near the epicenter who survived,” Bertilak said as he closed the door behind him.

“Even I could not near Camelot after,” Guinevere swallowed an emotion before it had the chance to form, “After the beasts came into our world.”

“You saw their magics,” Agrivane was twirling something between his fingers so fast is was a golden blur, “I do not think it is only Kay's soul and magic that kept Bedivere alive this long.”

“They will need time,” Bertilak said more to Agrivane than the other two, “both to heal and settle.”

Agrivane did not look up when he said, “They'll have as much time as it takes for the others to either return or be counted as lost.”

Bertilak joined Guinevere and Laurel at the map. There were three hair pins shoved into the map and table where there may normally be carved markers – the last known locations of the three they were waiting for.

“I'll expect him to be four days at most,” Guinevere barely touched the tip of her finger to the hairpin with some blue gemstones embedded into silver, “He'll be two weeks,” she tapped one adorned with a small metal swan, “and he will be a week, almost exactly.”

“However your magic works,” Agrivane was still twirling the thing, “it seems highly effective.”

“Alchemy,” Guinevere said plainly, “is more of an art than the science it masquerades as. I could include you in the recall, if you would like.”

Agrivane shuddered, dropping what turned out to be an ornamental knife.

“It doesn't hurt,” Bertilak offered

“I'll pass,” Agrivane picked the knife back up and began twirling it again, “Besides, you all know I'm useless as anything but a figurehead.”

“If you keep telling yourself that, it will come true one day,” Laurel told him without looking up from the map, “And before you start talking about how you were not Lot's _correct_ ,” she spat out the word as if it was spoiled meat, “son, it is not blood that determines what you are capable of.”

“Arthur was born outside of his parents' marriage,” Guinevere said it as if it was not the greatest shame of either Uther or Arthur.

And, Bertilak realized, it likely was not.

“Additionally,” Bertilak decided a more direct method of reasoning to try to get Agrivane out of his sulking corned, “I do not think legacy and bloodlines are much of a concern anymore.”

It seemed to do the trick, for Agrivane put the knife on the floor and rose to his feet and joined everyone at the table.

“How are they?” Agrivane asked, his voice quiet.

“Kay is in a body of his own,” Bertilak told him, “and I left them in the dining hall. I can give no promises to the sanctity of your tables.”

“Oh please,” Agrivane nearly smiled, “I grew up with Gawain. I know what those tables have seen.”

“What's really bothering you?” Laurel asked.

Agrivane sighed and braced the heels of his hands against the table. Laurel offered him a soft, caring expression and that seemed to break whatever wall he was trying to put up.

“I'd hoped that maybe,” Agrivane seemed unsure of the words even as they left him, “Maybe one of them would be alive, somehow, out there carving out a life for himself somewhere.”

His brothers, Bertilak knew, were four of the only people Agrivane had ever managed to truly care about. Despite their fights and periodic rage, the Orkney brothers were their best when they were together. He had seen that much in Gawain over the years, experienced how the brothers' bond shaped every last one of them.

He could not begrudge Agrivane the threads of hope he'd been silently grasping at over the past decade, could not find it a fool's pursuit. He had wondered, often, if Agrivane only agreed to sit on the throne as Gawain's regent because he thought Gawain invincible.

Bertilak knew, though, that Gawain knew his death would come before Agrivane's, that his age and rage would clash at the wrong time and it would be better to have the only brother who had a head for numbers and the finer aspects of speech at Orkney's helm.

He'd told Bertilak this much not long before he did, indeed, meet his death, had begged him not to tell any of his brothers this confession, and he had kept his oath to Gawain despite how frequently he wanted to assure Agrivane that Gawain thought him to be the best of the five brothers to be King.

“You've done well,” Laurel spoke where Bertilak could not find the words, “and have stood strong in the face of a kingdom that needed direction when they thought all was lost.”

Dragons, Agrivane and the entire kingdom of Orkney found out not terribly long Camelot had fallen – though they did not yet know that – can fly great distances without needing to land. So, too could a number of beasts.

Bertilak remembered that day, too, for that was the day Agrivane had called upon the most primal of magic, had summoned Bertilak and a number of other gods to fight alongside him, had succeeded in bringing down the beast that threatened _his_ Kingdom.

And then the King of Orkney had not touched magic since, the terror of what he was capable of sealing off that part of him that no one had been able to coax any more out of him. Agrivane, it seemed, had been so changed by the incident that his very soul would forever be altered. 

That was the problem with humanity, Bertilak often thought, that their souls remembered more than their minds and they carried wounds they were unaware of, lived with wounds they would never be able to heal.

There was a beauty in that, though, the strength and grit the human soul carried. It was this tenacity that made them so very human, this drive to not only survive but to care about generations that would not be born for hundreds of years that made them such a fascinating thing. It was the willingness to go forward no matter the odds that had kept him going back to Gawain, had kept their relationship alive.

It was Gawain's willingness to look the impossible in the face and keep pressing forward that had informed his decision to stay when the rest of the gods went home, when they'd left humanity to whatever resources they could muster.

“You are what Orkney needs,” Bertilak found the words at long last that still allowed him to still keep his promise to Gawain.

Agrivane made an unhappy noise, but did not leave the table.

“So, we wait for the rest of the Old Guard to arrive,” he signed, “What else?”

“They said they wanted to see what information the castle holds,” Guinevere was chewing on the inside of her cheek, a nervous habit, “We can assist them with that.”

“How many of them know how to read?” Agrivane realized he did not know.

“Kay can,” Guinevere offered, “Bedivere's literacy is limited. I do not know about Bors. Or the girl.”

“Kay,” Agrivane said the name carefully, almost as if he said it louder, it may summon the man, “will he be able to remember everything?”

“Everything he lived through,” Bertilak explained, “I do not know how aware he was during his time bonded to Bedivere's soul, but everything before that, he will remember.”

“How?” Guinevere sounded genuinely curious.

“Souls remember more than minds,” Bedivere explained, “Even across lives, the soul remembers what it has lived through. It is not unheard of for souls to find each other across lifetimes.”

The three humans let that settle in, let the possibility they may find _each other_ again after this life become a reality.

“If we are to return with Arthur,” Guinevere's eyes were as steely as her words, “we are going to need to find a way to close that gateway to whatever hell those critters are crawling out of.”

Despite everything, Bertilak laughed as Guinevere realized she'd just called them _critters_.


	11. Kay's Revival

Bors watched, a mix of intrigue, horror, and curiosity battling for dominance, as Guinevere sat on one of the dining hall tables, stitching a loose pair of pants for Kay, who was standing with his arms folded and a set of Bedivere's clothing covering him. The tunic was far too loose and the pants far too short, but it did the job of keeping him decent. The only lights were the torches on the sides of the hall, providing just enough light to work by but not enough that Guinevere was not straining her eyes as she lined up the stitches.

“Was he that tall the first time?” Alexandra whispered.

“Yeah,” Bors assumed Kay's hearing was still as sharp as it had been the first time, “It's...Kay is definitely still Kay.”

“I can hear you,” Kay huffed.

“I assumed,” Bors said loud enough to cover Alexandra's squeak of embarrassment.

“How much do you remember from after the point you bound your soul to Bedivere?” Guinevere asked as if there was no chance of it being a touchy subject.

“Honestly?” Kay hugged himself a little tighter, “Nothing until the river.”

Guinevere made a noise that very clearly said _I know you're leaving something out and wish you wouldn't do that to yourself, the thing where you don't let anyone in until it's too late to adjust the course of your thoughts._

Kay made a similar noise back that was interpreted as _I do not appreciate your ability to do this after, apparently, an entire decade has gone by, my thoughts are my own._

“So uh,” Alexandra seemed to be using Bors as a spacer between herself and whatever was going on between, well, between the Queen and her castle's keeper, “what's going on?”

“Kay needs clothes that fit,” Bors explained, “and Guinevere seems to be the only one who knows how to sew.”

“I can sew,” Kay interjected.

“You need to rest,” Guinevere told the increasingly irritable seneschal, “and it's too cold to be going around with so much of yourself unprotected.”

“Fire magic,” Kay uncrossed one arm to point to himself.

“The rest of us are cold just looking at you,” Guinevere struggled not to laugh as she said this, “Besides, you'll thank me later when you don't have to direct your magic at your feet and whatever you're facing at the same time.”

She had meant it as a joke, sure, but Bedivere's recount of Kay's death came back, echoed in her jest, even dared to suggest that Kay wasn't _good enough_ to protect those he had the audacity to care about.

“I'm sorry,” Guinevere said. Kay only stiffened his spine and looked pointedly away in response.

“Where is,” Alexandra considered the rest of her question carefully, “everyone else?”

“Agrivane and Laurel have retired for the evening,” Kay began rattling off the list, “Bedivere is asleep. Bertilak is doing a patrol of the castle grounds and some of the surrounding woods.”

“What's the difference between retiring for the evening and being asleep?” Alexandra asked, having never heard them used in the same sentence.

“One involves sleeping,” Kay looked at her, one eyebrow raised, “the other does not.”

Alexandra had no further questions. Still, she said, “Is everything at court this...coded? How many words have meanings even below their meanings?”

“Yes,” Kay told her, then when Guinevere kicked him without looking up from her stitching, he added, “It is something that keeps a court knitted together, and able to send messages to each other without breaking from conversation.”

Alexandra's face was caught between a frown and pursing her lips in thought. Her entire world had been ripped out from under her, but instead of falling through the floor and into the unknown, it seemed her blinders had been removed and a world she'd barely even dreamed about had come into her view.

The problem with blinders, Kay knew, was that they only blocked your peripheral vision, so when they were removed there was a whole different world now acutely out of focus, too much to try to take in and only so much that could truly be seen.

It was hard enough for an adult, for a Knight whose life had began over and over throughout his years, each new iteration of himself having to learn to ignore the freefall feeling and land on his feet in this new world. It happened in sudden moments that only had anything resembling forewarning in hindsight – becoming foster-brother to the King, falling in love with the only person he would ever have room in his heart _to_ fall in love with, his foster-brother's only child bringing War to one of the last sacred grounds in the kingdoms.

The dragons and other hell-beasts, though, had not rewritten his understanding of himself, just of the world around him. They did not require much understanding – if you hit them with the right magic, they died. If you stabbed them in their equivalent of vital organs, they died. Just because they had magic and claws and teeth and wings that were previously believed to only exist in stories invented to scare small children did not make them special enough to warrant any soul searching.

But here he was, reborn again, pouting at his Queen because she was doing something kind for him, Bedivere left asleep in what he assumed would be _their_ quarters for the foreseeable future. A new body that still felt and acted very much like his own. It was as if he had not died, but simply gone through some sort of time jump. Even his ribs hurt in the same way from the horse that kicked him when he was barely out of boyhood. 

He wondered if he could have done the same for Bedivere if their positions were reversed. If he deserved such a deep love that neither time nor death had dulled.

He wondered, too, what this barely-not-a-child had gone through, what made her so willing and eager to leave the only home she had ever known to follow two strange men across land and sea. What lurked in her home that made monsters and swords and magic beyond her control seem like a better choice.

He knew no one had explained to her how court worked, how the relationship between Camelot and Orkney had been assumed to be so badly damaged that he and Bedivere did not even think to go to them for help. She did not know the histories between the kingdoms, the violence that plagued the Pendragon bloodline so far back it did not matter how the Pendragon children were raised – they would always meet their end through violent means.

“If you have questions,” he said to Alexandra after a silence that had not at all been comfortable, “ask. Do not let fear of judgment stop you from asking.”

There was a nearly imperceptible flinch from Bors – an echo of his pseudo-son's failures at the wasted lands ringing in Kay's instructions to the girl who wanted to be a hunter, who wanted so clearly to grow up before she was due to do so. 

There was a time when Kay believed children could be spared destinies that would only serve to kill them before they got a chance to live through harsh words, but he had been so, so wrong about that and spared no lives – only bred shame and resentment where perhaps there could have been something better, or at least something less harsh.

“Kay?” Bedivere appeared in the dining hall, “Kay, there you are.”

Bedivere seemed to transport himself across the space of the room instead of walk it, by Kay's side no sooner that he had finished his sentence.

“I told you Guinevere was going to be fitting me for my own clothes,” Kay said to him. Still, he wrapped both arms around his partner and held him close.

“Can't say I expected that to be in the dining hall,” Bedivere mumbled into Kay's chest. That was a completely fair statement on Bedivere's part, Kay thought, and the dining hall _was_ an odd place to do a sewing project in the middle of the night.

“If I have to spend any more time cramped in a little room I am going to start tearing walls down to open the space up,” Guinevere still did not take her eyes off the project.

“Do we all just do everything in the dining hall now?” Bertilak's voice carried as he entered the space. Even in the low light, there was blood that could be seen splattered across his leathers. It did not seem to be his, at least from first glance, and he walked as proud as ever.

“Where are we supposed to do things, the throne room?” Guinevere finally looked up to throw a Look at Bertilak, “Sure, if we all wanted to never sit down again.”

“Are we talking about getting rid of the thrones?” Laurel asked from behind them, “Because if so I vote we just chuck them off the roof.”

“I'm not sure what we're talking about anymore,” Bors had clearly given up on trying to follow the conversation.

“Perfect time to start a new conversation, then,” Kay suggested. He'd had enough introspection brought on by feelings of guilt and failure for his first night back in a body he could call his own, thank you very much.

“How do I learn it?” Alexandra asked, “How do I learn to understand how much meaning exists under words as you say them?”

That was, in hindsight, the moment what was left of the formality of the courts of both Orkney and Camelot began to unravel and something more straightforward, something more directed, something more _raw and honest_ took their place.

This formless thing began to emerge – this thing that the survivors of the fall of Camelot could shape as their own, perhaps even make space to be people first and their titles second.

The power of a fresh perspective was invaluable, Kay knew, and this not-quite-a-child, not-yet-a-woman had already been worth more than the King, Queens, and Knights put together.

“With questions like that one,” a smile crept up on Kay's face, “With questions exactly like that one.”

Bors put an arm around Alexandra and brought her in a little closer to him – just as he used to with Percival and Galahad – and Alexandra relaxed as one might against a parent.

Some things, Kay knew, never bowed to the forces of time and change.


	12. Caradoc's Run

Caradoc had been running for two days.

Well, his horse had done most of the running, but the animal had met a rather unfortunate end and while it was not his first horse he'd lost to a hungry hell-beast, it didn't get any easier.

And so he killed the creature as he'd killed more than he knew numbers for, and started running.

The woman he still might call his Queen if he was not careful of his tongue had _never_ recalled him from the field.

He feared what he might find when he arrived at the castle at long last – ruins? The last of both Orkney and Camelot's bloodlines slain like so many men, women, and children he'd been too late to do anything for? Would the hell-beasts still be circling? And if they were, would he have the courage to lay down his life in an attempt to avenge them?

When he came in sight of the castle and saw it was undisturbed, he forced his exhausted body to run faster, to pull from a reserve of energy he might later call _terror_ such that he may be able to say he was not too late to make a difference, not this time.

The guards recognized him even without his heraldry, flung open the gates and did not bother to try to beat this one to where ever remnants of the royal family was within the castle walls. And so, he was free on the last stretch of his flight into the unknown.

He found King Agrivane and Queen Laurel first, sitting on what would be a window rather than an oversized hole in the wall, frozen as if they were sharing something that was not to be shared, foreheads pressed together, Agrivane's hand over Laurel's as she rested it on the stone.

“Caradoc,” Queen Laurel was the first of the three of them to recover, “you're back.”

“What's going on?” he asked.

“Bors, Bedivere, and Kay have found their way here,” King Agrivane did not bother with anything akin to a preamble, did not soften the force of the news, “and may be able to find a way to seal the rift the creatures come out of.”

His now-King spat out that word, creatures, in a way he had not the last time Caradoc had heard him address the things that had changed everything he understood about the word. Sure, the news that there were _three others_ who had survived these impossibly long years and showed up either together or not terribly far apart, but there was something about King Agrivane's disdain for the word that resonated in a pitch Caradoc had never known before,

“Where,” Caradoc suddenly felt his exhaustion overcome him and he staggered forward. His King was there in an instant, steadying him, making sure he did not collide with wall or, worse, floor.

“Easy,” Agrivane instructed him, “Sit, we will get you food and water.” 

He was handed off to Queen Laurel, who eased him to a seated position on the window opening while Agrivane disappeared into the mysteries that were the working nature of the hallways of Castle Orkney.

“Where are they?” Caradoc managed to ask, even if his words were slurred just slightly, “Sir Kay, Sir Bedivere, and Sir Bors, where are they.”

“In the archives,” Queen Laurel told him, “or the training courtyard.”

Caradoc nodded, his head light and the sun's light too dark to be right.

“Oh dear,” Queen Laurel said quietly. Her hand was on his shoulder, deceptively strong, holding him up and his back against the wall with just the heel of her palm, “No collapsing without at least two people to carry you somewhere with fewer edges to catch yourself on.”

He tried to respond with a solid _Yes, my Queen,_ but it came out mumbled, imtelligable only in his own hear.

“Here,” King Agrivane had returned, “drink this.”

A wooden cup filled with cool, sweet, watered-down ale was pressed to his lips and then taken away too soon. He made a sound of protest but was too weak to reach for the cup.

“Don't want you getting sick,” a voice that sounded like Sir Kay's said to him, “How long have you been without water, man?”

He tried to tell him two days, two days without sleep, without food or drink, two days such that he may save what little was left of the Crown he loved and lived for. He did not know how much of that he got out, how much anyone understood, but it must have been _something_ because Sir Kay scooped him up as if he were a child and started to carry him as if he weighted nothing.

“Once of you follow me with the drink, the other summon the others,” Sir Kay ordered them around as if they were of equal rank at most, “We'll meet in my quarters.”

There was a part of his brain that told him to ask if Bedivere would mind, but the thought did not reach the part of his mind associated with the act of thinking, and as such is suffocated in the haze of his feverish exhaustion.

He was being lowered, now, onto something much softer than stone and the cup was being pressed to his lips again.

“He is much, much earlier than expected,” a voice he did recognize – once-Queen Guinevere's – said. She seemed far away, a memory that formed before it had the chance to happen in the first place only to be recalled as she spoke of him.

He wondered, briefly, if he should still call her Queen, if the title still followed her even as her lands laid in waste, assumed beyond reach, beyond repair. He wondered, too, what Camelot would be without a Pendragon at its helm, if it would still be Camelot under her rule or if it would become something else entirely.

What may have been a suppressed chuckle, may have been a noise of generalized concern, told him he'd said at least some of that aloud.

“Sorry,” he managed. He was unsure exactly for what, but he knew also that the apology was genuine.

“Rest,” Sir Kay told him, “and tell us your story when you wake, and we will tell you ours.”

He wanted to tell them there was no time to rest, no time to take for himself, that he needed to be present, needed to be _here_ and ready to fight, that he could not bear to see another body laid to waste by these trice-damned creatures because he wasn't enough. He wanted to scream that he needed to be _enough_ and not just someone who tried.

The cup was pressed to his lips again and he took a drink, larger than the first two, and there was a burning that told him his throat was injured from what he'd put his body through. He tried to reach for the cup this time, needed more of the relief it imparted to him.

“Easy,” King Agrivane said to him again, “Please, rest.”

Even as his mind screamed and screamed, his body decided he could not resist a command from his King.

He hoped more than may have been healthy for the soul that when rest had chased any last vestiges of exhaustion from him, the others would still be there, still be as unharmed as he saw them before sleep claimed him.


	13. Jealous Gods

While everyone awaited the return of the last two poor souls who had chosen acting as the last line of defense to a collection of ideas that meant nothing if humanity was wiped out, Bertilak went hunting.

It was only marginally different from how he usually hunted day in and day out, only a few things different from the usual too-long stretches of nothing followed by too-quick rushes of victory as another one of the hell-beasts fell by his hand.

A loud whoop followed by a choked-off sound of concern as Kay and Bedivere bounded ahead of him and the soft scoffing noise of Bors behind him – those were new things.

It was not a hunt like it was for food – though he would be the first to admit he would not see if the hell-beasts were edible – where silence and other assorted forms of stealth were needed if one did not want to starve. If anything, the hell-beasts were drawn to noise, but the problem there was the lack of assurance on what would come to the noise. Whether it would be a single small creature or a pack of hounds whose fur was flame itself or, as he had heard from the last defenders of Camelot, a dragon was even a possibility.

And so, he hunted in silence on his own.

But there was something about them, these three Hunters who cut their teeth once on the shadows of Uther's sins and once more on the rise of beasts that made sin itself cower in shame, that almost allowed him to believe there was nothing left in any world that could not be done.

“How long do you think we'll be out?” Kay called back, to Bertilak or Bors, whoever answered first. Bertilak looked back to Bors, letting him take control, told the Knight-Hunter that the lone god who chose to stay and try to turn the tide was not the one in control here.

“If we're not back by supper, you're the one who's responsible for feeding us,” Bors called back. Kay laughed and kept pushing ahead, unbothered by Bors' conditions.

Bertilak could have outpaced them easily, could have suggested they all went their own ways to try to cover more ground, but he knew the two who bounded ahead as if there was no concerns, as if there were no things they had to look out for but each other, would not part except for the unthinkable happening twice, he figured the one who kept careful pace to be the last of their group would not leave them alone, not yet, not so soon after the impossible had been done in the dining hall.

And so, there he was.

It was Kay who sensed them first, Kay who froze for such a small fraction of a moment that he might not have seen it if he hadn't been staring anyways, Kay who took off at a run so full of purpose it reminded Bertilak why people like them were called _Hunters_ in the first place.

Bedivere's sword cut the first one down – these things that reminded him of overgrown mice if their legs were long and their muzzles were less stubby and their two big front teeth were accompanied by too many more, long, sharp things that slashed at everything a foot away from their jowls. These were one of the rare species that had fur, but he knew from experience the fur cut skin like thousands of tiny swords if you had the misfortune to come into contact with one of them.

It was a flurry of swords and fire and earth swallowing entire creature, the three Knight-Hunters working so well together Bertilak nearly felt the need to step aside such he did not get in their way. He resisted, though, struck down creatures with mace and magic alike.

There was an axe, once, in another life, where the mace had been. An axe that taught him even the gods had much to learn from humans, their pride, their fears, their instinct to take care of once another, to preserve life even at great personal cost.

It was an axe he buried – _He buried!_ – along with its rightful owner. An axe forged by the gods, given freely to someone much too human in exchange for the lessons he could not unlearn if he wanted to.

The beasts continued to try to cut them down until their last breaths, tried to slice their cloth and leathers and skin for the sake of it.

That was another lesson, learned much faster but carried much further away from his heart – these beasts would attack you whether or not you desired to attack them. Destruction for the sake of it was their modus operandi. They torched the land when they wanted to set up a den and they slaughtered everything they came across. Not just for food, but for the sake of death.

He wondered, early on, if they were something one of the myriad gods of death had created, something that was for purposes he would never understand. As time wore on, he decided these beasts were their own thing, untethered completely now that they had been loosed onto a world that had no defenses against them.

As Bors crushed the skull of the last beast, it became clear to Bertilak – these people, this earth, indeed had no defenses against monsters such as these, so they remolded themselves into what they needed, sculpted Hunters from Knights and farmers and children who did not want their own children who were years away from being born to be born into a world that only knew fear and slaughter.

Yes, he decided, this was where he was meant to be.

“What's next?” Kay looked as if he had not even broken a sweat.

“Lunch,” Bors told Kay more than suggested to the rest of the party.

And so, mere paces away from the skirmish, they opened their packs and divided the hard cheeses and sausages amongst themselves. Bors, then, pulled the sweetest roots Bertilak had ever tasted from the ground.

“Did you just make those?” Bedivere asked as he took a bite. It was not a tentative bite, not one that indicated there was a moment where he wondered what he was eating, if it was safe. There was a deep trust, there, to be handed something foreign and eat without first asking if it was safe to do so. 

He'd seen people die from a single berry, and here Bedivere, once so close to a King he had to know the risks, trusted a man he'd only been working besides for a handful of weeks after a gap long enough he knew most people would have forgotten the synchronicity they still had.

It was baffling, really.

“Yep,” Bors tried to hide how pleased he was with himself.

Bertilak watched and listened, mostly, as the three of them bantered and bickered and laughed as if there was nothing worth worrying about. There was a freedom in their camaraderie that he had not seen or felt since, well.

Since a very memorable Christmas feast that made him ache for the humanity he gave up such that he might guard the last of the sacred forest groves until the end of time itself.

“Bertilak,” Kay pulled him from his own head, “what's the strangest behavior you have seen from the critters?”

“Critters,” Bertilak chuckled despite himself, “There was one hound-thing, perhaps three winters ago. Seemed...old. Maybe sick. It was alone, and when it charged me its head was sort-of lopsided, as if it wanted to hit me with the side of its head rather than bite. Ran itself into my sword like it didn't even notice it.”

“I wonder if it was a head injury,” Bedivere said as he tried to take a bit of Kay's cheese. Kay slapped Bedivere's hand away with a laugh.

“I wonder if they have organs like ours,” Bors was looking at the remnants of the skirmish, “I can't say I've ever checked.

“I tried, once,” Bedivere said, “even if they're already dead, whatever's inside them turns to burning steam just the same.”

“What if we froze one?” Kay suggested, “If we can keep one whole and still keep it, and wait until it's frozen?”

“We will have to do it when the conditions are right,” Bors finished the last of his lunch, “They decay otherwise.”

Kay shrugged, unbothered. “I'll bring it up again when it's the right temperature.”

“Come on,” Bors sighed, “If that's not going to be our only successful hunt of the day we need to be back on our feet and moving.”

“If you say so,” Kay rose to his feet so gracefully it was a little unnerving. He seemed more like fire itself, moving as he pleased without regard to form or limitation.

Bedivere rose slightly slower, eyes trained on Kay, a reverence so obvious it neared worship. Bors rose last, lingered again such that he was last in the group. Bedivere and Kay loped ahead, the fluidity of their movements betraying their age and the wear that at least Bedivere had on his body.

Bertilak had wondered, once or twice, if Kay's new body had the same pains as his first one, wondered if the scars he noticed hurt as scars tended to do, wondered how deep Bedivere's memories ran and if there were ideals Bedivere held that translated into things Kay had not experienced before, things that were not a part of Kay but rather Bedivere's love for the other man.

“Hounds!” Bedivere called out, “Hounds headed our way!”

Bertilak had felt them at the moment Bedivere had called the warning. It was something he did not realized he would have to get used to, that these beasts were things humans could sense as fast – or faster, in Kay's case with the overgrown rodents – as he could.

Perhaps there was something of the gods in these humans.

The hounds were met with a wall of fire, Kay's magic so precise it was clear the magic was a part of him, not something he had been gifted or cursed with or learned through sheer stubbornness. No, this magic was his, this magic would be with him no matter what – or whose – form he took.

Bedivere and Bertilak stood at either end of the fire wall, their weapons ready to fell any of the creature smart enough to run around Kay's conjure instead of into it. And, behind them, Bors waited, his magic thrumming deep into the earth herself, waiting, a trap set, an intricate thing waiting to be sprung and Bertilak could feel Bors giving his trust to the Earth Mother herself, letting her guide him in the magic he wove as if he had been born with it, a feeling so distracting he nearly missed the first hell-beast that came around the corner.

His mace swung as he commanded it, brought down on where its skull should have been, the leathery skin and flame and whatever held it together crumpling under the force. 

Bertilak reached out wit a magic of his own, summoned a shield that was all too familiar but was not his, hoped none of the other three saw it before he was able to send it back to its resting place on the walls of the Orkney castle. The shield slammed into a second hound, sending it sprawling backwards for a piece of a moment he so desperately needed to get his thoughts back in order.

He had expected it to be different, not difficult, working with others, with those who lived with the humanity that clawed at his soul and begged him to be someone he had not been in centuries.

The hell-beasts fell, one after another, his mace and borrowed shield working in harmony that should have been practiced.

Once the last of them was choked by Bors' vines, had the edges of one of them snaked through its body and coming out its mouth, an ivy flower daring to bloom at the tip, Bertilak sent the shield back and turned to face his brothers-in-arms.

“Alright,” Kay sounded winded, “let's head back so I don't have to cook dinner.”

Bors laughed a little and began walking back the way they came, the slight slump in his shoulders the only indication he was beginning to tire. Kay and Bedivere lingered behind this time, the sounds of their leathers knocking against each other and whispered conversation with a giddy overtone floating up to Bertilak and Bors.

“You two are lucky you're endearing,” Bors' tone was teasing, “because you're acting like lovestruck children.”

“Oh come on,” Bedivere's eye roll was audible, “we sound a little older than children.”

“Only a little,” Bors was still teasing, but then, less teasing, “You are two of the only people who have made me question whether swearing off seeking a partner was a good idea. Your bond seems to have added a dimension to your lives that cannot be found alone.” 

The words seemed awkward, clumsy, as they fell off Bors' tongue, but Bertilak found himself agreeing with the overarching sentiment.

“I don't think we're the best template for that,” Kay was caught somewhere between teasing and serious, “The gods themselves would be jealous of what we've made between us,” a small pause and then, “Well, er,” and what was a genuine giggle.

Despite himself, Bertilak laughed.

Kay was right, though – the gods would be jealous.


	14. Words, Words, Words

He'd been tracking the man for days – a ghost made of flesh and what little was left of his checkered heraldry on his shield destroying any aim of blending into the crowd. 

There were few left like them, though, Dagonet supposed, so few that it had been ten years since Kay and Bedivere had sent him away, told him to go evacuate as many people as he could from the surrounding towns. Ten years since he had seen another from court, ten years with the terror in the couple's eyes haunting his dreams and waking hours alike. Between the war and the monsters, he was so sure he was the only one left, that he was, in the end, the coward who fled what little of a desperate last stand the War Marshall and seneschal had made again those then-new abominations before God and man alike.

They had made it across more than half the land at a pace so grueling he feared he would lose the last remnants of Camelot because he was too old, too tired, too unprepared for whatever Hunt this impossible apparition from his past was seeking. When they boarded the same boat only moments apart, Dagonet was sure the other man would take notice. It felt like a fever-dream, the days of chasing and chasing and chasing without ever catching him, never quite close enough to get his attention while being able to, should it turn out to be someone who stole Palamedes' heraldry, kill the bastard who looted from his brother-in-arms.

As the ship carried them across the storm-tossed waters, Dagonet began to remember why he had never wanted to be a knight, and why, once he was forced from one servitude to another, he never went far if he could help it.

He hated boats.

He sat in the tiny room that passed for a dining hall – the only room with lights not extinguished by the waters – as his stomach pitched and rolled with the ship and he wondered which would kill him first. Still, it did nothing to prepare him for what his heart and soul did as Palamedes sitting across from him.

“Dagonet,” Palamedes' voice still had its rich rumble to it, if perhaps a bit weathered by time, and his eyes had the same barely-contained mischief behind them that Dagonet had assumed put him in the good graces of Dinadan and Tristan so quickly when Palamedes had first come to swear his fealty to Arthur's Camelot.

“It is you,” any fear, and doubts that had accompanied Dagonet on his chase disappeared, washed away by a rain that did not reach them in this makeshift sanctuary.

“I was worried,” Palamedes spoke as if confession sins to a priest who taught what neither of them believed, “I saw you, time and time again over the past small handful of days, but I feared it was my mind playing tricks on me and could not bear a loss that was not real.”

“You're in a hurry,” Dagonet hated the words as they left his mouth. They felt cheap, an impostor of a sentiment neither trying to hide of relay any sort of truth.

“We are not alone,” Palamedes' voice was so low that Dagonet struggled to hear anything he had to say over the storm's noise, “and I have been summoned back to where the last King and Queens with any connection to Camelot reside.”

Questions by the hundreds formed in an instant, tried to all leave Dagonet at the same time, blocked anything from leaving his mind, destroyed any hope of even a single one of them making it to his tongue as they all collapsed under the weight of each other.

“I hope,” Palamedes smiled at him, a nervous but honest thing, “that you will spend the rest of the journey with me.”

Dagonet could only nod, his fate sealed.

Palamedes managed to talk a horse seller out of two horses almost as soon as they landed, whatever money changed hands done so quickly it went unseen by anyone besides Palamedes and the horse seller. The storm was still raging and both newly acquired animals seemed to hate the rain and the thunder and the bright flashes of light against the otherwise too-dark sky, but Dagonet saw no other choice than to find his way into the animal's saddle and stay as close to Palamedes as possible. There was no way to pull food from his sack without ruining the sack's entire contents, and so they rode on, soaked through, cold, hungry, carried by two animals who did not know the touch of either men, did not have the connection a horse needed to carry its rider in the most efficient way for either horse or rider. 

Still, Dagonet's mount kept pace, kept Dagonet in the saddle, carried him over hill and through wooded patches so dense with trees he thought for sure he would scrape against the trees despite not doing so even once.

The storm seemed endless, seemed to obscure when was day and when was night. Palamedes kept pushing his horse onward, and so Dagonet followed. His horse seemed to go onward, too, seemed to know it was expected to follow. His animal focused where he did not, his thoughts not coming to him fully formed and his ability to let himself believe that this was real, that he was not alone, that there was Palamedes here and others promised where ever it was they were headed.

When the hounds with skin of leather and hair of fire howled, then howled again, then again, each time coming closer, Palamedes pulled his horse to a halt and Dagonet's horse did the same.

“It will be better to face them than let them catch our horses,” Palamedes said, voice loud to rise above the rain's deafening crashing against branches and what little was left of the autumn leaves still hanging on to the branches' knots that had given them life just two seasons ago.

The hounds closed in fast, their fire burning bright, seeming untouched by the rainwater. There was no steam, no gaps in the flame, nothing that might have indicated their fire played by the same rules as the only other fire Dagonet had ever known, the fire that could be made and unmade by the hands of humanity.

“Wait,” Dagonet told him. He saw out of the corner of his eye how Palamedes listened, his sword still drawn but a trust Dagonet did not feel he deserved playing out in Palamedes' choice to do as Dagonet told him to.

The hounds seemed to have converged on the muddy path, soaked earth kicked up as they ran at the once-Knights and their strange horses. Dagonet fell to one knee as if swearing himself to Arthur and his Camelot once more, eyes lowered and lungs filled with fresh storm air.

“Stop,” he told the hounds, forced the air out of his lungs, formed a trap with the one word. The storm's winds became tethers, the hounds frozen as they were when the command reached them, some off the ground completely.

Behind him, Palamedes lunged forward, cutting down the hounds that seemed to be frozen outside of time with swings so precise he could have not been anything but a soldier turned Knight in the life he lived before everything changed.

“How did you do that?” Palamedes asked almost as soon as the last of the unearthly hounds was slaughtered.

“Magic,” Dagonet told him honestly, “I have not had it my entire life.”

Palamedes made a sound that was entirely too knowing for the silence that followed. He wiped his sword on his hose and returned to the horse he had been riding. Dagonet, once again, followed the lead Palamedes had taken up.

They rode on, the storm unchanging but the silence between them heavier.

When the castle – the first castle that was not an over-sized house he had seen since he was forced out of Camelot – Dagonet nearly wept. There would be people in there, people he knew even if they did not remember him. He let out a whooping cry of joy and kicked his horse in the flanks. Palamedes laughed and did the same, the two of them carried faster and faster towards what would, hopefully, prove sanctuary, if only for a little while.

There were guards at the gates who let them in, who recognized Palamedes and trusted that the newcomer had Palamedes' trust when the once-Knight told them as much.

Almost as soon as they had dismounted, their horses were lead away. Palamedes offered a quick, “Come,” to Dagonet before taking off towards the castle doors. 

Once inside, the soaked fabric clinging to his skin and the cold that the season brought regardless of weather seeping past his soaked skin and into his bones. A shudder accompanied this, allowing in a chill that felt like it may never fully leave.

The halls of the castle seemed impossible, twisting and turning in ways that made no sense, doors all closed with no indicator as to what each one may be hiding from a passerby. When at long last Palamedes lead him into a room that had no doors, only long tables with their accompanying benches, Dagonet allowed himself a sigh of relief. This was a dining hall, a place that almost invariably connected every critical part of a castle with the other critical parts. Even without having been to this castle, without knowing who it belonged to, he could tell they were where they needed to be.

“Palamedes!” It was Queen Guinevere herself who called out for the Knight, “You have returned!”

Dagonet looked to the Queen, so very alive and looking untouched by time and beast alike, and he might have wept if not for the shock of it.

“Dagonet?” a voice he recognized came from further back in the hall, called his name in the form of a question. He looked, then stared, then ran to embrace Bedivere.

It was a crushing thing, the years of calling himself a coward and nights spent shredding what little hope he had ever held at being someone who mattered coming to the surface, reminding him of all he had not done, all he had failed to do as he embraced Bedivere as if he were a long-lost friend and not someone Dagonet had spent far too long afraid he might disappear in the shadow of the War Marshal's greatness.

“What in the – Dagonet?” It was Kay, this time, Arthur's surly foster-brother, the seneschal turned last defender of Camelot. Dagonet looked up in time to see Kay barreling towards them before he felt the once-seneschal join the embrace, “I feared we had sent you to your death.”

There was something in that, something in the honest care and regret in the voice that was normally so sharp it could cut into someone's very soul that instead cut Dagonet's hold on the years upon years of running from his regrets instead of using them to sharpen himself into who he dreamed of becoming.

There was magic in words, he knew, magic in what words built and what they tore down, what they teased out of the shadows, what secrets they controlled. It was this magic, this craft he had whittled from his destiny to die in obscurity during his time as a fool, this magic that had loaned its power to him when the air began to do as he commanded, began to make people and then monsters move as he pleased.

And here, in a castle whose sovereign and keeper alike he did not know, there was another type of magic taking shape, an undercurrent that came with words that was a type of deed in and of itself. It was this magic, now, that Dagonet realized could not be controlled, only worked alongside to form something greater than himself.

It was this magic that had brought him to this impossible place, that had him in the presence of the very men who likely spared his life.

It was this magic he knew he would need in whatever storm they were gathering to face.


	15. For Queen and Country

It was so easy, sometimes, to imagine how his brothers would have reacted to things – anything, really, whether innocuous or irreversibly monumental or anywhere in between those two extremes. Mordred would have struck Bertilak across the knuckles for his constant drumming against anything solid, for example. Gawain would have found _Dagonet,_ of all people, coming back after a ten-year absence in the wilds of this world hilarious but refused to explain why even if asked directly. Gareth would have been faster at organizing the distribution of supplies at the very beginning of the siege of dragons. Gaheris would have abandoned the castle entirely after saving it – he always hated how it reminded him of their parents.

None of them would have debated jumping out the nearest window when Camelot's Warmarshall came into their throne room as if returned from the dead, had it ever been theirs, with Excalibur strapped to his hip, as he had done now near three weeks ago. It was not a proud moment, the debated flight from his own throne to whatever awaited him outside, but he'd managed to remain seated despite everything that happened, everything that was still happening as they waited for -

\- for the last member of their company. He did not share Guinevere's superstitions over naming people while they were still on a journey, but at this point he was willing to indulge those who stuck with him despite being the least qualified Orkney brother for the job of being King.

There were some things, though, it was harder to imagine – nonetheless know – what any of his brothers would have done in his place. Would any of them let out a scream that resounded in the heavens themselves, called down the elder gods on the verge of being forgotten to strike literal dragons from the skies to protect what he had unwittingly inherited from a father who thought he could keep such a secret as his second son's true parentage without repercussions?

Would they have shut themselves off after the sky held no more dragons and the gods left one by one until only Bertilak remained? Forsaken any of the magic and power that even still, after ten years of ignoring it, still screamed to be released, to be used, to become a part of him rather than an unwelcome thing more akin to a parasite?

Would they have let a Queen whose Kingdom had fallen when her husband fell at the hands of his own bastard son and a second Queen who they had spent the first several years of their marriage having never seen before run what little was left for the court of Lothain, of Orkney, of whatever they were to call themselves as if names still mattered?

Would they have not even blinked when the last god who cared about seeing humanity's fight to its end wove an entirely new body for someone who had, for all intents and purposes, been dead for nine years?

Would the type of fierce love and dedication the Warmarshall had to have kept alive to sustain such intricately detailed memories of the Seneschal have made his brothers so jealous they could not look their own spouse in the eye because of the guilt that rode alongside the jealousy?

Those problems, he had come to accept, were so uniquely his that there was no answering how his brothers would have handled it. 

And so, as Guinevere, Queen of a Camelot that lay in ruins, and Laurel, his wife and Queen who was not married to him by a choice either of them made, used their elbows to prop themselves up on the edges of the only table in what had become the war room, he sat in the corner and listened. They had managed to keep things under control since Bertilak betrayed his fellow gods, after all. To try to take control now seemed a fool's errand.

Speaking of fools – Dagonet had settled in as if Orkney was his home where the others had remained on edge, seemed ready to bolt the moment they heard something that might be a crit – a **creature** – near the castle walls. He could not blame them, he supposed, as they had been out there the entire time, learning their new magics and fighting the monsters that maid the tales of fair folk snatching babes from their cradles as their mothers slept seem tame in comparison. They had been shaped by their experiences while he remained hidden. It was only fair he did not rise up to try to take control or credit now.

Or ever.

He caught snippets of the conversation, heard quill scratches against the map that spanned from here to Camelot to Joyous Garde and beyond. Every time he looked at the map, it seemed to have a new series of dark ink scratched into it. Rarely was it words or even letters, just dark marks made with such precision they had to have some sort of meaning. Once he – once the last of their company – returned, there would be more marks and perhaps then Agrivane might remember to ask after their meaning.

For now, though, he sat and tried (and failed) to listen. It was not that he did not care, it was that he was exhausted. He accepted that the exhaustion was nothing sleep nor rest nor how deeply Laurel cared for him in ways he would never deserve was going to chase away.

He knew where everyone else was, or at least their approximate locations. Caradoc was teaching the child – Alexandra – how to use a sword instead of throw it and pray. Bedivere, Bertilak, and Palamedes were hunting – for food, not for monsters. Kay was getting the castle kitchens in working order. It was their first day apart since Bertilak had performed a miracle in the dining hall, that, too, Agrivane knew. Dagonet was organizing the library, combing through it for any useful information, carrying out the whole reason Bedivere and Bors had shown up in the first place.

Bors, now, he knew for sure exactly where the Hunter who'd been the only embodiment of virtue and chivalry to survive not only the encounter with divinity but the journey to and from the whole incident was, at least at that exact moment.

Bors was seated next to him, asleep. It did not look comfortable but Agrivane was not about to wake the man. Bors had joined them offering to help but had realized quickly it was a Queens' table. It had not been long after Bors had decided Agrivane had the right idea, sitting in the corner, that sleep had overtaken the older man.

Older man – that was the part Agrivane could not look past when he compared himself to those who came at Guinevere's call. They were all older than him, save the last one they were waiting for, and yet they were the ones who still fought, they were the ones who put their lives on the line for something so much greater than themselves.

The power that once called the gods themselves to his side screamed in the lining of his skin when he thought too much about how useless he had been, how he had become the figurehead he hated. It burned and begged to be silenced no longer, but he let it throw its tantrum. Whatever had empowered him a decade ago had struck a terror so deep into his soul he sometimes wondered if he had died that day and this was his own personal hell.

There was only one way to find out if this was life or an afterlife, and should it indeed be life that was not something he wanted those he left behind...

...it was not something...

...he would not leave Laurel. Not like that.

Despite everything, he had managed to learn to love her for everything she was and everything she did, for King and Country, yes, but also for him. He loved how fierce and fearless she was. How she, despite not having magic or weapons training of her own, had managed to shift from life as a commoner to a Queen to someone who controlled a war room against an enemy who played by rules that could not be understood, nonetheless studied.

He loved _her._

And that, sometimes, scared him more than the monsters they were up against.


	16. Wild Hunt

Near three weeks ago, the pendant he always wore against his chest, just over his heart, thrummed with an energy he'd felt only once before.

_Come home,_ it told him, it pleaded with him, _You are needed here, now._

Near three weeks of nonstop travel, near three weeks stopping only to rest and eat – he did not want to arrive only to be useless because he collapsed from exhaustion – near three weeks of praying to every god whose name he remembered and quite a few whose names he was sure humanity had forgotten, begging them to let him not be too late, not again.

He prayed to gods whose names held storms, let the rain and wind and percussive thunder live in his veins as long as it would stay with him. He invoked gods who only existed on the cold winds of winter, hurrying the seasons along that they would grant him their haste. He offered half his supper to gods who wore skins of the last wolves in the land that they might find it in their hearts to reunite him with the only people left alive he could call anything like family.

He slept and dreamed of spirits, angered by the riven land that once called itself Camelot. He saw his home – his Camelot – take forms beyond number. She was a woman, weeping at the river's edge for sons she would never again hold. She was a child, screaming as fire rained from the sky and tore down the houses and shops around her, just out of reach of any hands that might save her. He was a warrior running on the frontlines of battle, knowing it was only pain and death he would meet on the field but charging without reservation or fear nonetheless. He was his own son, died too young, never given a chance to flourish, his impact on the future now in the hands of men too old to be handed the legacy of youth. He was his King, fallen and disappeared, body taken away as something hell itself would shy from split his home open. She was his Queen, alone in a world that she had to carve a new home out of without those who had supported her. 

He awoke screaming every night, the sky still too dark to be called morning. He took down his camp – if it could be called that – and lead his horse by its reins until there was enough light to see the path so he felt he would be able to steer the animal away from holes and rocks and roots. The roads were mostly empty, people too afraid to travel unless they absolutely needed to. The caravans of traders they ran into all seemed suspicious of a man and his horse traveling alone. His scars, long and jagged across his face, disappearing under a well-worn boiled leather breastplate, did nothing to assure strangers that he may be harmless. Sometimes, the monsters found them on the path, thought they had found a pair of easy targets either for food or for sport.

He'd heard stories from the woman he'd called his mother, the lake spirit who now guarded his King, of the Wild Hunt lead by a god who knew nothing of mercy or forgiveness, knew that keeping to the middle of the path was the only way to join the hunt instead of become one of the hunted.

Where he had once been a Knight and Champion, he was now a Hunter, a leader of his own private Wild Hunt that he and he alone had any say over the outcome.

And so, he kept to the center of the path, used the warhorn strapped next to his sword – the horn the only thing left that once belonged to his son – to warn anyone who may be nearby that there were monsters that could not be soothed away with a gentle hand and parental love. He waited for them to come to him, let them think they had some sort of advantage – if they were capable of thought at all – before decimating them, monster after monster. The unholy fire that seemed to come with nearly every creature he'd encountered never held up to the magics of the water his mother had given to him when she delivered the news his King was dead and in her care now. It wasn't cheapening the hunt, he felt, but evening the odds.

Once his miniaturized Wild Hunt was over, he would pick up his horse's reins and continue onward, cursing the time he'd lost.

Too late, too late, again and again, too late throughout his life. There was no one on this earth he loved that he had not been too late for in the end: first his husband, then his son, then his second love, then his King. And now, his Queen, the last person left alive he managed to hold a genuine type of love for had called him back months earlier than he was due to return. He knew, though, that she would not have called him away from his mission if it were not something more important than finding how far the beasts' corruption had spread. 

If he was late again he would find what it meant to live alone, to live with only memories to keep him warm and keep his hope alive.

The end of this land in sight and the beginning of the land he needed to be lost beyond the horizon rose to meet him, yet there were no ships left to charter across the sea, their captains all too afraid to face the winter-rough waters and waves and winds. Not in a storm like this, they all told him, not in a winter like this, they would add as if winter had only just started.

But he knew the water and the waves, knew how to pray to the gods who found life where men found their deaths. He knew, too, how to steer a ship much too big for one person to be on all alone. A ship of a similar size had been too small for two, but that could not stop him, not when home was so close.

And so, he commandeered a ship, secured his horse, and set sail in the middle of the night, the lightning his only light. The seas whispered to him, told him how to steer, where to point the ship. They told him when he was nearing the docks, how to dock the ship without damaging dock or ship. They told him, as a small handful of very confused dock hands connected ship to dock, that he could toss a coin into the waves as his thanks. He did, and to the dock hands, too, that they might know he was thankful despite his silence.

He lead his horse through the night, though the animal knew they were nearing the land it had been born, its steps lighter and head tossed higher every time he told the animal to walk with him rather than drag him down the path.

The last days blurred together, sleep and food and prayer and the land covered at a gallop by a horse who seemed to live to race the wind all one long moment of fear mingling with determination that carried him into the halls of the castle he tried so hard to call home despite how much he had lost. His boots clicked against the stone floors, too loud to sneak but he wanted anyone left – everyone left – to know he had heeded his Queen's call, that he had made it alive and was ready to render whatever aid was needed. He wanted whatever gods hated humanity so much they would abandon this world in its hour of need that he had survived, that their hate – or worse, their indifference – had not broken his spirit.

He needed someone to find him and tell him that, just this once, he was not too late.

His assured steps took him to the dining hall where his Queen was the first to see him. She was on her feet and running towards him, and he matched with a run of his own, an embrace that was more of a collision nearly knocking the air from his chest.

“Lancelot!” his queen exclaimed, her face buried against his chest, “Oh, Lance, you're home.”

Home. Yes.

He had made it home in time.


	17. King of a Nation With a Critter Problem

Lancelot was so overwhelmed, looked near drowning as those who had sparked the call home came to his attention. Bors almost felt bad for the man, but any pity was drowned by a relief he could not put a name to that the former Champion had survived, had learned to stand on his own. He could see Galahad in the man, the constitution despite the weight on his shoulders, the way Lancelot's shoulders slumped the instant he was hugged. He had not thought things like that would be passed from father to son, but there was no denying the parallels.

When Galahad was still alive, he resented Lancelot at times, wished Lancelot had known more of what it meant to be father to someone with a burden so sacred. After Galahad's death, after watching Lancelot's grief take a shape no mourning would be able to remove from the other man's eyes, the resentment took an entirely different shape, one much closer to camaraderie. This, though, had been short-lived, war breaking out while the Champion was too far away.

He had not given Lancelot much thought that was not connected for how he failed the boys who'd trusted him in shouldering their burdens since, well.

_**Since.** _

Still, as Guinevere holds Lancelot against her like she cares about him as a person, Bors feels the resentment-beast try to rear its head again. He tells it he does not know what Lancelot or Guinevere have been through, does not know the truth or depth of their relationship, does not know how much fear and grief the Queen is subduing as she hides her face from the world as he slays the feeling. Such internal ugliness has no place here and he knows this.

Bedivere is on his feet while Kay is frozen, a reversal of roles, their shock and surprise worn for all to see. Alexandra is looking between the embrace, Bors, and Bedivere as if looking for a cue to follow. Agrivane and Laurel and Caradoc and Bertilak and Palamedes are not surprised, so Bors knows Lancelot was the one they were waiting for, not someone the unnaturally persistent storm that has been battering the land for the past several days brought to the feast hall.

A part of him wondered idly if he should stop calling it that. The odds it would ever see a feast again were so low that the name did little more than bring how much they had lost into sharp focus.

Lancelot seems to finally register there are more people than expected, that he _knows_ three of the four of them. He seems to extract himself from Guinevere more than release her before walking towards them.

It is Bedivere who Lancelot comes to first, then drops to one knee, head lowered so much the back of his neck is exposed. The surprise is near palpable from everyone save Agrivane, who seems relieved. Bors might remember to ask over the deviation from collective response later, or he may not.

“Lance?” Bedivere asks with a laugh that's supposed to hide the fear that has found him. Never before has Bors seen fear find the Warmarshall – not in battle or at the end of the world or the thing resembling life that emerged in the aftermath.

“You wield Excalibur,” Lancelot's voice is so quiet that Bors only knows what he is saying because the stones carry its resonance to him, “You are King to all that is left of the great union of Kings.”

“If that's the case,” Bedivere sounds so suddenly exhausted, “then I am King of a land with a Critter problem that needs some addressing.”

The juxtaposition of statements is so jarring that Bors is laughing before he realizes the sound is coming from him. Alexandra, at least, managed to hide her laugh behind her hands for the most part. He assumed she'd learned how to turn a laugh, no matter how deserved, into something else working at the tavern her father now runs alone.

Lancelot looked up, then, just a little, then looked to Kay, who was still seated on the table rather than the bench.

“If you say that makes me Queen to a land with a critter problem I am stabbing you with one of Guinevere's hair pins,” Kay said as if it was the most normal things to say.

It was Lancelot's turn to laugh, a surprised sound that seemed to escape the man without his permission.

“Up, man,” Kay instructed Lancelot, “On your feet!”

Bedivere helped Lancelot up, the man clearly exhausted, his clothes soaked through and his leathers likely rubbing his skin raw despite any padding he might have on. Lancelot was clearly pulling at Bedivere's arm, using the, well, King of a Nation With a Critter Problem for all his offered strength.

“Tell me everything,” it was unclear who Lancelot was talking to, exactly, as he sat on the bench by Kay's feet, “please.”

And so they did – the story of Bedivere and Kay's year in the ruins of Camelot, of Dagonet's air magic and how he used it to evacuate people who thought they could defend their homes, of Bors and his earth magic and how he'd become Earth's Champion, of Agrivane and how he found out he was Lot's bastard rather than just his second son, of Alexandra and her brother and how her father was dead to her.

They told him, too, of how the Kay seated on the table was a second iteration, how Bertilak spun a body from Bedivere's memories, how Kay had accidentally bound his soul to Bedivere's in his dying moments.

And Lancelot listened, eyes wide and mouth open, the surprise and shock and awe only intensifying with each story. Guinevere sat down next to him and entwined their fingers. Palamedes let a small smile escape as Lancelot squeeze Guinevere's hand, a once-forbidden affection no longer a risk they needed to debate in private.

“So what next?” Lancelot asked once the stories were over.

“I'm glad you asked,” Laurel seemed eager to keep moving forward, “because we've been planning and think we have something viable.”

Bors wasn't sure what that meant, but he knew it was more than he'd managed to plan beyond _show up and hope._

Laurel was on her feet and walking away. Everyone, without a word to each other, followed her without question.


	18. A Truth, An Emptiness

Palamedes felt too-cramped in the tiny room the Queens had commandeered as their war room, the eleven of them shoved shoulder to shoulder, Kay somehow scrunched up in a windowsill that should not have been wide enough to sit on, nevertheless in.

Laurel and Guinevere were telling everyone what they'd been able to map, where what types of _critters_ had been sighted. They had noticed some patterns, could tell which types could cross large bodies of water and which could not. They knew, too, which terrorized livestock and which seemed to greatly prefer people for sustenance.

“What we don't know,” Guinevere finished, “is how conditions are at the split.”

“It's spreading,” Alexandra told everyone and the air seemed to leave the room, “We felt it, on our way here. There are these...lines, these not-quite-cracks that felt like dread and evil and terror.”

“What?” Agrivane was the first to find a word. It came out at not much more than a squeak.

“They were,” Bors' fingers twitched as though he wanted to be closer to the girl, to protect her from the fear everyone else felt, “small, but yes. It seems the chasm has widened, is widening.”

“That would have been good to mention before now,” Laurel pointed out.

“And do what with it?” Bedivere argued, “We came here because we do not know anything about _it_ besides it spits out critters and burns people alive!”

“How do we know that last part?” Guinevere asked.

“I was there,” Kay's voice was thick, whatever he had seen a fresh wound once more, “When the earth split open and swallowed bodies and burned those who could not flee fast enough, I was **there**. I ran through smoke rendered from human flesh such that I might be able to rally survivors only to find myself alone at the edge of things as monsters beyond imagination began to pour from the riven land. I was there, frozen, _useless_ ,” he spat out the word, “as Bedivere ran towards the smoke and rallied the only survivor from the battlefield.”

_The only survivor from the battlefield._ Palamedes turned those words over and over in his mind, knew they meant Kay had been the only one on the field who'd survived. He'd heard different stories from the other two he'd long assumed dead. It was, regardless, a feeling that caused his stomach to feel as though it had dropped to his feet.

“I thought I was the only survivor,” Bors spoke up, “I was on the side nearer the towns, though.”

“It was impossible to cross,” Dagonet scrubbed at his face with both his hands, “I had to go around it to try to evacuate the towns. It extended to the far side of the training rings and livestock fields, the way I took.”

Dagonet was not, Palamedes realized, on the battlefield, at least not at the end of things. Then again, he had not been on the field either, an injury causing Arthur to send him to the castle for treatment. He had been careless and a mace had struck his shoulder and raked forward, his leathers saving him the worst of it but his entire arm was useless – dislocated, he'd learned the word as someone who he'd never seen before tugged at his arm and he'd screamed in pain as if he was the only one in the room suffering.

He had fought as if the outcome did not matter and it had cost him dearly.

Not for the first time, he let himself wonder how Dinadan would do in his place. Would he have stayed at court despite knowing he sat among murderers and cowards? Would he have left, stayed at Joyous Garde and left Camelot to whatever fate awaited her?

Would he have served Camelot's Queen even now as she stood beside the wife of the man who'd murdered the only man he'd ever called his partner and meant it in every possible way the word could mean? Or would he have said no, told her Camelot was dead and it would be best to try to stay as far away as possible?

He liked to imagine Dinadan would have made the same choices he had, that despite his distaste for court politics he would have rallied from heartbreak and rage and done his best to keep the people who stood no chance against these monsters safe.

He missed Dinadan in moments like these, moments where the other man's presence would have made the room less oppressive.

“Palamedes?” Guinevere's voice pulled him from his own head, “Palamedes, are you alright?”

“Yes,” Palamedes' reply was a terse one.

Guinevere looked around the room and then said, “Leave us.”

Everyone did as she told them, leaving Palamedes in Guinevere alone. The room was somehow more stifling like this, with Camelot's Queen without a land to her name staring at him as if she was weighing his soul against something he did not want to know the weight of.

He already knew his soul would be heavier.

“I called your name several times,” she did not sound angry or disappointed, just concerned.

The concern was worse, somehow.

“I was lost in thought,” he hoped that would be enough honesty to end whatever conversation she was going to have with him before it really got started. When it became clear that was not going to happen, he continued: “Mordred and Agrivane killed Dinadan so they could get away with the murder of Lamorak and feel _better_ about the fact their own brother killed Queen Morgause.”

He felt no better for saying it, but the wave of feeling worse he expected did not come.

Guinevere, to her credit, did not blanch or ask more questions or demand proof. Instead, she closed her eyes as if to avoid lowering them. She drew a deep breath and the air seemed to return to the room, seemed to let Palamedes _breathe_ again.

“He,” the words were happening now whether Palamedes bid them to come forward or not, “ _I loved him_ and every time I return here to say what I have found I am reminded his murdered rules while his body was discarded off the side of a road so, so close to Camelot that had he ridden only half a day more he might be safe, might be alive still.”

Guinevere somehow stood up a little straighter and opened her eyes again. 

“One moment,” she told Palamedes, who watched, frozen, as she exited the room. As the door opened he could see the others hovering not terribly far from the doorway. At first he was furious, a surge of rage and a feeling of having his privacy violated despite having no reasonable expectation of privacy nearly taking him down to his knees.

When the sound of a slap rang out in the eerily quiet hall and a stern, “That's for Dinadan,” reached his ears, though, he was glad he could hear it even as he sank to his knees, the knowledge he was no longer the only one who shouldered the burden of this knowledge, the fear his own life would yet be forfeit if he tried to seek justice leaving him and leaving behind a hole in his heart that may yet be filled with a sense of duty he had been unable to cultivate since he'd found what was left of Dinadan in a ditch and unearthed the rocks to give his partner a final resting place himself.

“Gather your supplies,” Guinevere sounded like the power behind Arthur's throne for the first time since he'd arrived at Orkney, “In two days, we leave for Camelot.”

There was a sharp intake or air and the threat of too many questions and objections about to break open when she continued:

“We are going to close that rift,” Guinevere said as if there was no other way that endeavor could end, “and we are going to do what the gods themselves ran from.”


	19. Restacking the Odds

As everyone loaded what little the castle of the lands Agrivane had found himself King of could offer them to sustain them on their journey back to the very place anyone with common sense would call a death trap into their packs, Dagonet took an internal census.

They each had one personal pack and two saddle bags, which implied there would be twelve horses who could carry a pack on each side. Some horses, he'd had the misfortune of experiencing, only tolerated one well-packed bag. Two and they treated the extra weight not like a larger saddle, but like a danger they needed to flee from.

Humanity never did seem to domesticate the animals that made the most sense. Chickens, for example, were just tasty enough to be eaten by wild animals and not-quite-trained guard dogs almost as frequently as they were eaten by people, just slow enough to be unable to run away, and just loud enough that there was no safe distance to live from chickens that could assure you would be able to sleep through the night.

Anyway.

There were elevennow beside him, one for each of the years he had spent alone, spent trying to forget who he was, forget where he came from. One for each of the full display of seasons he'd done his best to _keep moving_ , keep as far away from cities and towns as he could.

He was convinced these beasts he'd done his best to save people from sought magic, chased it, devoured it along with whatever host the magic was using. And while he had discovered the combination gift-curse he had received by accident the first time – he had shouted at a family who was sure they could defend themselves and their home and their business from _whatever nonsense_ , they had called it, that was on its way. He'd told them they were fools with a fate worse than knowing all the secrets of the King and the Court alike, that their pride was indeed their greatest sin. And yet, when they left with only their clothes on their backs and nothing in their arms, Dagonet had realized what he had done. He had not gotten through to them; they had not seen reason.

Air magic. He had heard of it, spoken only in whispers, able to take hold of people's minds, able to freeze them in place as if they need not fall back to earth. He watched them go and knew exactly what he had done.

And so, he had spent season after season in solitude, each encounter with the beasts spit out from a wold he never wanted to be dragged to sharpening his skill, improving his mastery. And they came, beast after beast after, well, Bedivere might call them _critters_ and Dagonet had no idea how he felt about that particular designation.

He would never use his magic near people again without meaning to, every act and every side-effect carefully controlled.

If he survived all of this, if the odds stacked against him fell in his favor despite everything, he wanted to be able to live with himself.

And these eleven, now, so human despite the divinity and elements left to anything but chance and fate, these people he would hopefully come to call his company, the odds seemed to have scattered rather than fallen any which way.

There was Agrivane, once too proud to be anything but brash, now tempered by what might have been time, or perhaps fear or trauma or Guinevere. He had not seem surprised when she'd slapped him, had shown no surprise when she accused him of murdering Dinadan in cold blood.

There was a moment, in the silence that seemed to echo, where all the faults of King Arthur's Camelot, the nepotism and the cowardice and the way those who could claim to share in Arthur's blood especially thought they could write their own laws in the blood and honor of others was laid bare for everyone to recognize, for everyone to admit the part they played in the fall of Camelot because they thought keeping things at the status quo to be more favorable than the truth itself.

Dinadan had merely been a side-effect of needed to be right in all they – the Orkney brothers, a band within Camelot now broken beyond repair – did. He had not been a person, had not been a question that would rest on their conscious, but a side-effect that needed to be dealt with.

How many lives had been lost to Camelot's need for peace?

Dagonet did not have the time to count anymore, if he did at any point in his impossibly long life.

There too was Laurel, Agrivane's wife stolen from a contract another man had held over her and then sent to this very castle to live without Agrivane for years. There were rumors abound – rumors even the shadows were not privy to yet Dagonet had heard – about why this was. Agrivane was not interested in her but had wanted to slight the man who should have been her husband. Agrivane wanted nothing to to with women. Agrivane had know knowledge of who his wife was, and someone else entirely had arranged Agrivane to be the recipient of the marriage contract.

Dagonet knew, now, that those rumors were only to attempt to weaken Agrivane's renown, cast him in a light that the principles of Camelot could not touch.

Agrivane had seen saving her from a lifetime of what any woman sold to a man in power could expect to receive as one of the last good deeds he could do.

And now, as Queen, Laurel seemed to be proving herself Guinevere's equal, powerful and steadfast in her own right. The Queen was often seen as the power behind the throne, and Laurel was no exception.

Guinevere, whose presence in Orkney had not been explained to him, whose absence from Camelot in Camelot's final days had not been addressed, seemed to have carved out a space for herself in the lands of the young man whose need for truth and justice lead to the exact opposite.

_But was Camelot not Mordred's home, too? Was the blood he shared with Camelot's King, the blood father and son spilled on the now-cursed lands the final element that lead the survivors here?_

She was just as much a Queen here as she had been in Camelot, proud without being unreachable, sure of herself without crossing into hubris. There was no panic to her, and the sense of urgency she carried was not inflated by a fear of the unknown. It was her magic and call that brought Agrivane's soldier-hunters back to the castle, and in turn it was their faith and trust in her that kept them coming back.

If anyone could find a way to turn even the winter's deadliness into something they could use to their advantage, it would be her.

The Once-King's Champion was now just Lancelot, no titles or sense of nobility to his affect. He was exhausted, a lifetime of loss and lies and sacrifice that only lead to more loss having caught up to him. Whether Lancelot was doing whatever he had been doing all these years for Guinevere or for Arthur or in a desperate bid to keep what was left of the ruins of his sense of identity, Dagonet could not tell. There was too much pain around the man to tell where his past ended and his future began.

Caradoc, who could have been a King but chose to serve under Arthur and Arthur's promises, now served under a different King, one who did not carry promises but instead held the line at what was the last stronghold in the lands that had united themselves when faced with the force that was Arthur. He seemed eager to not be the head that found itself heavy with crown and all the crown entailed, but there was also a willingness to serve, to see himself as someone who was a part of something, not someone who was in charge of how the threads of fate that comprised a nation's legacy wove themselves.

Dagonet had wondered often if Caradoc possessed more sense or more drive to erase his name from history so that the idea he bound himself to would survive, and the years had done nothing to shape Caradoc in a way that provided and answer. Still, Dagonet had to respect the man's durability, and the drive to see things through to the end seemed their own type of magic, if not one Caradoc could wield.

There was one among him whose losses seemed to only bolster his willingness to act as part of this unlikely team, no matter the personal costs it incurred. Palamedes, the Knight from a land so far away it may be another world now, stayed and served his lover's killer as a both subject and soldier. There was an anger there, too, Dagonet now understood, an anger that had simmered just under Palamedes' skin for much longer than he had found himself serving under Agrivane.

An anger Guinevere had readily accepted as her own, an anger that the facade that had had the audacity to call itself justice had been permitted to grow so far out of control that it became the very thing it had been put in place to prevent.

The lone god among them, a god who had given up his own safety, his own kin, in the name of the memory of a man whose own life had ended before the world as they knew it now had come pouring from the riven earth, seemed more interested in hunting than he did in the tatters of politics and court still remaining. Bertilak was a fearsome thing, more a force of nature than man despite what he claimed to be his origins; that he had once been a man like any other was so far beyond Dagonet that he may as well try seeing any of the men around him as gods.

It was an impossible thing.

Whatever magic Dagonet and the others could manage, when held against that Bertilak was capable it was like comparing the light of a candle to the light of the sun itself.

Dagonet had thought that riding away from Camelot would have been the last he would see of Bedivere and Kay, that proud, stubborn pair determined to strip what was left of the only home they remembered of all its knowledge and power before deciding which path forward they would take. Despite Camelot itself already being in ruins, Dagonet had left them to shelter in what was left without argument otherwise.

There had been no successful arguing with either of them when they'd made up their minds as individuals when the court was the most of their worries – to argue in the face of what may have been the beginning of the end of the world was time Dagonet did not want to waste.

Bedivere was older now but no more tired. It seemed as if the years had been unable to sink more than skin-deep, that the Warmarshall held some power over time itself.

Kay, Dagonet had thought the same, but had been informed this Kay and the Kay he'd left at Camelot's demise were not quite one in the same. The soul, yes, but Bertilak had spun a body from Bedivere's memories, an exact replica down to the way the very edges of Kay's eyes pulled tight before the rest of his face when he wanted to say something but had, at some point, learned to wait.

The Seneschal, despite his reputation, was well aware of when he needed to hold his tongue. Save for the other Fools that Dagonet had met through his time in court, Kay knew the rules of the game everyone was playing whether they wanted to or not better than the King himself.

Together, this master strategist and this man who could see and know things that did not want to be seen or known, they were the embodiment of power, and Dagonet had not forgotten why he was afraid of them when he first met them.

When not working, though, whether it was loss or age or the fact the rules to this particular game were so, so different than the rules of court and other assorted politics, there was a personable quality to them that had not been there before.

Bedivere, especially, seemed to have developed a softness and a need for company that Dagonet wondered if the need for companionship would be the Warmarshall's downfall.

The last of the faces he knew from before the world changed up its rules was Bors. A man who'd lived his own share of impossible things despite not having been born into the same already-elevated positions as the others, Bors was also the most holy among them – possibly including Bertilak – and lived with so much humility the monks and priests could have learned lifetimes of lessons simply by watching Bors go about his day.

And yet, Bors was a man who'd watched, powerless, as the Heavens themselves come down to earth and carry a child he'd loved as his own away, and watched helpless again as the journey back killed the other child he'd taken in and loved as if the child was his own. Bors could have fled, could have shed his armor and started over as someone whose loss could have blended with the losses of everyone else fleeing from the beasts that had even less sense of justice and equity than those who called themselves Camelot did during its downfall.

_And that was the problem, wasn't it, that people assumed power over a place instead of tried to form a partnership with what would outlive them by design?_

Even in the small handful of days that might have grown into a smaller handful of weeks at this point – Dagonet had given up keeping track – he had never once seen Bors complain, nor offer insult, nor even try to express his own wants when the needs of the many were being addressed. 

Bors, Dagonet decided, was a type of terrifying matched only by how those who saw angels described the celestial beings with many wings and near-countless eyes. Bors did not need holy fire or to be back by God Himself – Bors had his own, quiet strength that did not need to show itself for everyone to know it was there.

For example, despite everything Bors had been through, despite everything he had lost, he had taken young Alexandria into his care and company.

There was no mistaking this not-quite-child, definitely-not-adult for anything other than Bors' ward. Even though she had, apparently, arrived with Bors and Bedivere both, it was the man who's lost two adoptive sons who had taken in a third child who had found herself abandoned by the world she was born into. She carried with her a reminded that life rolls on no matter what happens, that the raw, gritty strength of the human spirit gives no consideration to age or experience or circumstance. Things like survival and success were things that were pulled from nothing into one's heart, molded by choice and, at times, spite.

She was human, not god, and had no magic to her. She had held a sword once, briefly, Excalibur itself thrown in the closest thing to a prayer she'd ever made. Still, she'd lost everything – to human greed or human fear – and still was able to look forward and make her own choices about how her life would go from then on out. She'd been training every day until Bedivere told her she needed to stop, had been learning to read while those who stayed indoor scoured the libraries the castle seemed to hide in every possible corner of its senseless halls so she might be able to help them, too. There was a deeply personal stake she held in this, one that hardened her resolve but not her heart.

These were the ones who made up this Company. There was a sort of cobbled together feeling to the group, a coherence between them as a whole nowhere near as durable or familiar as that which accompanied small, small groups. Together, they were only twelve– a number that never seemed strong in a battle – but he knew it only took one to turn the tide. One soldier, one strategy, one enemy fallen in a place the enemy was not expecting.

This Company was mostly comprised of people who had been that one time and time again. It was possible, Dagonet reasoned, that once whatever odds had found themselves scattered by the group's assembly had rearranged themselves into their stacks, they would find themselves with a wall to fortify themselves rather than pillars of salt and sand, destined only to hurl every last one of them to their death in the hour of their greatest need.

And so, as everyone prepared to ride out into the winter, Alexandra and Bors' combined announcement that time was now an enemy as well making the most dangerous time of year to travel their only viable option, Dagonet put aside his thoughts of odds and destiny and fate and divinity and all the other names affixed to the unseen forces that shaped the world around him.

This was his choice, his first choice in a long time, and he would shape it as he could.


	20. Walk On

The snow bit at Alexandra's eyes and what little skin around them she'd left uncovered. Initially, she'd protested that the fur covering smelled too strongly to breathe as Bors helped her affix the scraps to cover her nose and mouth. She would need more air, she was sure of it, but Bors had chuckled a little bit and told her she'd be fine.

She tried not to think about how miserable she would be without it now, put thoughts of her lips freezing together and her tongue next out of her mind. She needed to keep walking, keep one hand on her pack's strap and the other on the reigns of the horse she'd been handed almost as soon as they'd gotten off the boats. Each step she took felt like time had stretched itself thin, her movements slowed down mimics of the steps she knew she was able to take.

Her horse seemed slower, too, its head lowered and face sideways as if shielding one eye from the howling wind would help anything. If there was snow everything would be worse, but maybe it would seem better, give her not-quite-logical mind something to excuse itself with.

Kay, she noted with a hint of bitterness, was doing just fine.

She'd heard whispers of the _critters_ being attracted to magic, and Kay's flaunting of his fire magic seemed both a slap in the face and a sort of reckless endangerment.

Still, a part of her was jealous as yet another part wondered if he was able to control it to the point it was gone completely. Could he tuck his magic away, become just as human as the rest of them? Or was he like Bertilak, in a way, human but not? 

That comparison made no sense either; Bertilak was a god while Kay was...

...what _was_ Kay.

It would probably be rude to ask.

“We'll be coming on a small village soon,” Lancelot's voice carried over wind, “It may be cramped, but we can rest there for the night.”

That didn't sound so bad. She missed the cold winter nights where her mother would call her and her brother to her and hold them both tight in front of the fire until they fell asleep. She'd wake the next morning tucked into her own bed, but the fire and her mother's love had always managed to keep her warm until the dawn.

While she knew she would never have another night like that, never again feel her mother's love or hear her brother's soft snoring, and knew it was a cruel sort of hope to wonder if she could find a sort-of surrogate in this strange assembly of gods and humans and a few who seemed to be caught between the two states of being, for the moment she let the hope lift her spirits. 

She would deal with the crash back down to reality later.

The day was short, as all they days were now, a winter come too soon and a sense of humanity's hope being bled from its spirit making any light seem less bright.

Still, this strange company she'd found herself with – while nothing like she had expected when Bors and Bedivere were still complete strangers speaking of royalty and castles – was something more, something that she never would have found had she let her father's fear of what existed beyond his tavern become her fear as well.

It was too near dark when they came to the town Lancelot had spoken of, Alexandra far too cold to be of any use in a fight against beast or man. She wondered if any of the others were too cold as well, if those without fire magic were as frozen as she was. 

There was a tavern, one Lancelot spoke to the man behind the bar in low near-whispers that she could only make out because she'd spent her entire life in a tavern, knew when someone was a patron and someone was a threat. There were two rooms, the barkeeerp said, and they would not fit everyone. He offered Lancelot quarter with the neighbors. Lancelot refused and Alexandra was thankful she had not found herself in the company of men willing to kick strangers out of their own beds on a winter's night because they thought themselves more noble, more worthy than the common folk.

Hunters, Alexandra knew, were not these men and women she'd found herself with, even if they went by the same name as the promise of coin and a warm meal dragged them from town to town. No, there were _protectors_ who would never call themselves as such, but rather let their deeds speak for them.

Eventually, the barkeeper fetched the innkeeper and let _him_ deal with Lancelot and Lancelot's coin.

She imagined what they must look like, the lot of them, half-frozen and so hungry they might eat supper for a group three times their number, their furs and treated leathers hiding everything but their eyes. She knew some of them – namely Bedivere, Caradoc, and Laurel – had eyes so sharp if they stared at you, you would feel as if they had seen every secret you had tried to keep from even yourself. Bors, and oftentimes Bertilak and Palamedes, had kind eyes that betrayed the pain and fury that built their calm exterior. She had heard of men like them from travelers, and knew they were capable of things decent folk did not speak of lest they invite it into their lives.

They were pointed towards their rooms and left to their own devices to decide who slept where. Guinevere took Alexandra by the hand and lead her to a room they would share with Laurel, Agrivane, Bors, Palamedes, Bertilak, and Bors. 

Guinevere shed her own protective layers and then helped Alexandra out of hers. Alexandra looked around to see everyone helping everyone else untie their furs and loose their snow-soaked boots.

“We will stay here until all our boots are dry,” Lancelot announced once everyone found themselves back in the inn's halls, “Tonight, we eat until we are full.”

That was perhaps the best plan Alexandra had heard since she'd left home.


	21. And Let their Better Days be Their Legacy

“It amazes me,” Dagonet was stretched out on the ruins of an old inn's bar, “how many people carry stories of humanity rising after their god fall. How many different faiths think their gods to be so fallible they would wipe out the world to start over rather than try to give their creations, their mortal compatriots, what have you – a push towards something better.”

“It's easier, I think,” Bors was sifting through what was left of the furniture, “to start over.”

“Easier sure,” Bertilak was watching the cleanup efforts, fascinated, “But right? No.”

“Is that why you stayed?” Laurel asked, “Because you want to see if you can give humanity a fighting chance to stop this particular end of the world in its tracks?”

Bertilak made a noise that reminded Agrivane of a wounded animal about to fight for its life.

“I stayed,” Bertilak chose his words carefully, “because this was my home once, too.”

Agrivane wanted to yell, wanted to scream at Bertilak about how Gawain – the one who should have been on the throne, the one who should have been King – never forgot whatever it was Bertilak taught him at the Green Chapel. Wanted to remind the last god on earth that there was a human who had a name, had a life, that had tethered Bertilak to a humanity he had forgotten.

“Why are we trying to stay here anyways?” Alexandra asked, “It's getting dark and there's no roof.”

“We're not going to freeze,” Bors assured her, “not with Kay around.”

Alexandra looked at Kay as if he were a stranger for a moment, a frown ghosting over her face but lingering in her eyes.

“Doesn't that take energy?” she asked, “Like, a lot of energy to keep us all warm in what are, effectively, ruins?”

“Yeah,” Kay said as he stretched, unbothered by the question, “but it's worth seeing everyone alive in the morning.”

Agrivane had not forgotten – had not been able to forget – the _months_ of exhaustion that had plagued him after calling gods to his castle so they would push back the horde, give what was left of the people he was supposed to protect a fighting chance to keep their lives.

If Kay's fire magic was anything close to that, there was no way Kay was going to be functional come daybreak, no chance he would be able to ride with them to a town that may have food that was not near as frozen as the land.

But this world was just as full of horrors as it was other impossible things.

Agrivane tried not to get too tied up in the fear they would have to wait for spring in this burned-down husk of an inn whose town was even more ruins, what the fire that swept through town years ago did not take having fallen nearly entirely from decay. In this Inn, there was only one wall standing, and even then scorch marks and plant decay covered the stones and long-dried mud and wood.

“So, what's your bets?” Caradoc asked as he hefted what was probably once a ceiling beam onto his shoulder and started to drag it to he perimeter, “Critters or raiders?”

“Raiders,” Palamedes sounded certain, “Were it _critters_ ,” he said the word like he nearly choked on it, “there would be material goods left behind, metals melted into the buildings' very foundations.”

Agrivane felt his stomach churn, the thought of people who looked the end of the world in the face and decided to accelerate it something that horrified him even more than the beasts.

But then again, was he really different than them before the end of times?

He did not look at Palamedes as he contemplated the answer.

Alexandra shivered, a thing that told everyone in the ruins she was fighting the winter air and losing. Kay shrugged off his coat and draped it over the girl as if it were nothing.

“Thank you,” she did not argue, her earlier concerns about the expenditure of Kay's energy gone in the face of her own exhaustion, “Oh! It's like curling up almost in a fire!”

“Sounds about right,” Bedivere noted from the other side of the ruins, “If I'd had that sort of heat generation I think I'd've noticed I was carrying you a lot sooner.”

“You think?” Kay called back, a barely-hidden tease carrying the question.

“On occasion,” Bedivere said effortlessly, “Not terribly often, honestly. Hear too much of it gets you in trouble.”

And wasn't that a dangerous truth wrapped in a smile? Except, Agrivane reminded himself, thinking more than he probably should only got him into trouble with his own head.

“What I'm thinking,” Lancelot cut the couple off, clearly not wanting to stop his share of the clear-up efforts to deal with things like words and thoughts, “is that if we can build a lean-to type shelter, we can use our coats to form a temporary wall, and between our furs and body heat and Kay, we'll last the night.”

“What about watch?” Laurel asked.

“The horses will let us know if anything wants to kill us,” Palamedes said it so effortlessly that Agrivane shivered, a thing no amount of warmth would have driven out.

“You think we've spend years alone _and_ without sleeping?” Dagonet did not guard his tone or words.

Laurel mumbled something like, “I hadn't thought of that.” Almost on instinct, Agrivane shifted to out one arm around her waist.

“I agree with the lean-to idea,” Caradoc interrupted, “It will be cramped, but that will help us, really.”

“It's safer, in its own way,” Lancelot took the beam from Caradoc, “being alone on the roads.”

“How so?” Laurel had never much concerned herself with the mechanics of what was, in effect, Orkney's small guild of Hunters-for-Hire.

“When you're only looking out for yourself,” Bedivere's voice was empty, “you're less likely to try to make a bid for time.”

“You're less likely to sacrifice yourself when you're alone,” Alexandra echoed Bedivere's idea with a much more concise one.

The rest of the shelter was built in near-silence, the weight of the notion that everyone else might try to make the sacrifice play, the silent judgments trying to figure who was most likely to lay down their lives. 

Kay had already done that once – would he do it again? Lancelot would for Guinevere, but would he for anyone else? Could Bertilak even die?

Agrivane realized how little he knew about these people he'd pledge his life along side when the world thought the worst things the darkness hid were other people.

“Can I help?” Alexandra shattered the silence, her young voice so firm, her determination to make a difference making her seem like she'd been waiting her entire life to become a Hunter like most of the rest of them.

“Wait until we're sure we've got the wood stable,” Dagonet told her, “then start pulling the furs out and lining the floor while we get the coats secured.”

Alexandra seemed to vibrate with the strain of _waiting_ , a thing that seemed near-exclusive to youth. She reminded Agrivane of Gareth, in a way; Gareth's drive to be something more than his years and escape the shadows his elder brothers had not realized they'd cast over the youngest of them echoing in Alexandra in that moment.

Laurel wiped a tear out of the corner of Agrivane's eye before he realized it was there.

Kay sat on Agrivane's other side. The heat rolling off the other man made Agrivane wonder if there was blood in Kay's veins or if that was fire, too.

“She does remind you of him, doesn't she?” Kay kept his voice so quiet that there was no way anyone besides Agrivane and Laurel had heard him.

Agrivane bit the inside of his cheek to keep from crying out, from laughing so he might not scream. He tasted blood, faint but there, and hung his head and shoulders so low he though he might fall from the perch he'd been on since their arrival. He'd forgotten until that moment that Kay had known Gareth, had recognized who he was, had worked alongside him when his own brothers had not recognized one of their own.

“All of them,” the world slipped out more than they were spoken, “All four, and for what?”

“Were that I had an answer,” Kay shook his head.

Agrivane wanted to snap at Kay, to tell the Once-Seneschal that his pity was unwanted and unwelcome. The pause, though, let Agrivane consider that Kay was likely hurting like the rest of them, perhaps more. Kay was always ready, always sharp-tongued, and always ready for a fight. He had been foster-brother of a King whose life had been more important than anyone had realized, had known Arthur as a person before any of them knew Arthur was to be King. He had worked alongside more Knights and servants than Agrivane could have ever known.

And for Kay, barely more than a year had passed since he'd lost damned near everything.

“I don't want this to be their legacy,” Agrivane had picked his head up just enough to face forward, his eyes unfocused and his mind too crowded.

He did not want these monsters being unleashed on the world to be remembered as a catastrophe that could have been prevented if he had only insisted one of his brothers sit on his throne and let him got to the battle at Camlann in their place.

“It won't be,” Kay seemed so sure of that statement that Agrivane did not mind trying to lean on Kay's fortitude, “None of them are going to be remembered as the catalyst for this.”

Agrivane wished he had Kay's confidence, wished he knew how to use whatever magic had channeled through him in small bits and pieces, wished he still had strength to be of use in whatever sort of final stand Guinevere had orchestrated.

He wished for a lot of things.

“Come on everyone!” Caradoc called from far enough away it was clear he understood they were having a moment not meant to be shared, “let's figure out how we are going to best stack ourselves so nobody's chests are crushed by another.”

Agrivane let himself laugh as he hoped that would be the worst of the night's problems.

When the day broke and everyone was alive, in one piece, and breathing freely, Agrivane could have wept as he realized his hope had not been in vain.


	22. Half-way Out of the Dark

It had been several hard weeks on the road, the weather and the fear a group of Hunters – the King and Queens assumed to be Hunters and not royalty – drawing fear more than respect no matter how much coin they offered. There was something about the distrust, the bastardization of a profession that could have propagated itself, could have defended humanity even down to its last stand that made Bertilak's fury rise. While he had understood the desertion by his fellow gods – their faith in humanity's short lifespans leading to a more altruistic society than that of the immortals long gone – he had hoped the threat of extinction would see them turn their weapons against this new common enemy.

They were crowded into a single Inn room, everyone arranged more in piles than anything that indicated any forethought or reason. This was the longest night, the night Bertilak handed his power back to the Oak King – a process done without either of them having to meet, the Earth knowing which of them she needed to empower as life returned to her soils.

The rest of the company had long fallen asleep, the significance of the the exact day and its meaning had not been swept up in the urgency of their mission found itself worn to near nothing in the days leading up to this particular Inn. The biting cold of the worst winter since the Pendragon bloodline fell made traveling much more difficult even before the delays caused by any number of these impossible beasts trying to turn the Company of Hunters into their next meal.

The most Bertilak had counted in one skirmish went over twenty before he decided counting in that particular instance was not worth the effort. While they had been victorious without any of the Hunters so much as breaking a sweat – always a bad idea in such cold anyway – there was the fact that none of them had seen so many in one place before that replayed in his mind more than he felt comfortable with.

Even if his mind had been quiet, he knew he would not sleep this night. He had snuck out of the room, then out of the Inn, then onto the roof as quietly as possible, left his coat and shoes in the room. He had never needed them, but had never wanted to draw even more attention to himself. The cover of darkness allowed him to shed the facade of humanity he kept in place for the comfort of others.

There was almost no cloud cover and the stars were shining so bright they reminded Bertilak of the way his family had, long ago, filled as much of their one-room house with candles, each light a promise that they would be there through the rest of the darkness, that they would survive – together.

It was true until is wasn't anymore.

Bertilak, his name now a callback to a name he'd forgotten what would have been lifetimes ago, had not considered he would not be able to go back to his family once he made his promises to the Earth herself. He watched from afar as they mourned him, lost and presumed dead, wept with them but too far away to draw any comfort from the grief process. 

And so, the isolation on the rooftop of this strange Inn, the people – so human and so mortal where he could never be again – felt like the price he had to pay for thinking forever had a meaning.

The gods, those he called his brethren but knew such a title was far from any truth he could hold onto in the transience of existence, seemed so sure that to exist, to possess their magics that granted them powers over particular domains gave them meaning that could not be taken away by the ravages of time. They lived with lines drawn cleanly, each group of them with their areas where they could dip their toes in the waters of humanity to reassert themselves over the short lives of the ones they acted like they partnered with.

Was it different, Bertilak often wondered, to be brought forth in such an existence instead of having been chosen like he was? Was there something he would never get to feel, not have the ability to learn because he was never truly like those who pretended he belonged among them?

He would find no answers in the silence of a cold winter's nights, even on one as sacred as this.

He laid back, the damp thatch soaking his night clothes and drawing out an involuntary shiver, a throwback to bygone days he knew he would be better off to forget about entirely. 

He would survive this, he knew, even if the rest of humanity did not. Perhaps taken down by these _critters_ time and time again, tasting death just long enough to remember he was once human before the Earth brought him back so he could fulfill his promise. It was a twisted thing, a planet so desperate to keep her protectors – he was sure there had to be more like him scattered all over the world – around that she would cheat death on their behalf.

He would be alone, in the end. He was always, always alone in the end.

Even if those sleeping stacked together like kittens wanting to keep warm below him survived the closing of the rift, time would take them from him at one point or another. Age, if they were somehow hardier than the things they had yet to face. Disease, if they the type of misfortune that could strike anyone no matter their status struck them, too. Mauled by these things as Kay had been.

He'd felt the fear Kay had in the former Seneschal's final moments. The fear was not of death, as was the fear that struck most men in their final moments, but of being too late to have done the right thing.

And wasn't that a fear that would stay with him long after he had forgotten its source.

More than that, though, he felt the bond between Kay and Bedivere, the love they'd both held onto. This was not a love kept out of spite of the ways of the world or fear of what loss felt like, but one that was a part of each of them, whole alone yet still made better by the other.

If anything could eclipse the fear of the good left undone at the end of things, it was love.

Though winter often brought thoughts of death and scarcity, there was a type of life that tonight brought into focus. It was a quiet life, one that did not want to bring attention to itself or be relied on for shelter or comfort. Instead, this life simply wanted to march on, to see the other side of the night and welcome the dawn that spring brought.

Would _they_ bring with them the second spring of humanity? Or would they only hasten the end of the human era, their magics and their drive to be better than they were the day before conduits for the monsters to overrun the entire world, not just this land so surrounded by sea it was almost its own miniature world?

There were no answers in the night, no whispers from the Earth as she shifted her focus to the more transient things that her seasons of growth brought.

When he'd first crossed the threshold from mortal to god and guardian, he promised himself he would be like the holly tree whose spirit he found kinship with – evergreen, unyielding to the cycles of time and season. Tonight, as every midwinter's night since he'd taken his vow, he renewed that promise.

Only tonight it felt different. He tried not to dwell on why that might be.

Well before the dawn, he slipped back to the ground and headed back to his shared room. He startled the Innkeeper but quickly explained he was coming back from a midwinter worship. It was accepted as reasonable, Bertilak's soaked, thin clothes and bare feet ignored either out of politeness or fear.

Kay was awake – only Kay – when he re-entered the room. In the dim light from the single candle that had not been lit when he'd left earlier, he could make out Kay kneeling by the candle and a small, sad smile on his face. When he took a moment to _feel_ , he noticed a magic that did not normally surround the man – a magic of a ritual.

Kay had not lost track of the days.

“You remembered,” Bertilak hoped the words would not wake anyone else. Kay nodded and turned his attention back to the candle.

Closer, there was a presence well-contained but powerful, a connection between the candle's flame and Kay's magics that seemed to have taken the Seneschal to another place entirely. There was a fury to it, a thing that had a life of its own that used everything Kay had done, had seen, had brought into his life to take form. There was life in this fire and it demanded to be known.

Bertilak knelt by Kay's side and made his own connection with the wood under them. He let his own magic flow as it wished, let it mingle with what was already in the space.

They stayed there, silent, until Lancelot awoke and joined them. The magics of water surrounded the Champion-without-a-King, joined whatever it was they were doing. Not a ritual but not _not_ one either.

Lancelot hung his head and closed his eyes, a sorrow normally hidden so deeply Bertilak had not known of it mingling with his magics – a mourning for someone he had forbidden himself from calling to mind in his day-to-day life, a love for someone he would never see again washing over the partly formed circle.

It was Dagonet next, his air and his own pains let free for the darkness to take. There was no need to speak, the rising wind in the closed-off room a testament to the things the Fool-turned-Knight-turned-Hunter held onto so that he might always have a reason to get back up should he stop.

Bors, then, his earth magics so different from Bertilak's, so much more raw. They carried with them something so _human_ that he saw why Earth had chosen him. 

Guinevere last, the Queen who still had a kingdom to fight for kneeling beside Lancelot. She bit a small amount of skin off the tip of her finger and began to draw on the floor with her blood. A wish for light, for strength, for success; a promise that she – and those who journeyed with her – would see their task through to the end; a plea for protection, each symbol drawn faster than the last.

The flame spiked higher as Guinevere finished the interlocked symbols, the shared desire to be better than they had been until now, to _be_ the light in the darkness its fuel.

The magic settled suddenly, the strands each of them had been weaving separately finding themselves woven together, an appeal to those higher than they were managing to make their pleas in one voice.

Slowly, Bertilak turned around to see Agrivane standing there, still mostly asleep, mouth hanging open and a magic that belonged to the gods settling uneasily in the lining of the King's skin.

“We're half-way out of the dark,” Agrivane seemed only partly aware of what he was saying, “and we're going to have to trust each other if we are to finish our journey to the light.”

Agrivane was, Bertilak realized, being borrowed to deliver a message they all needed to hear. 

The gods had not abandoned them, had not left them to whatever fates awaited them; they'd been waiting until enough pieces had lined up and there was a true chance at succeeding.

Despite their faults, their mistakes, their failures - despite their sins and the things they would still do wrong, there would be no good left undone. Not anymore.

“Half-way out of the dark,” Bertilak agreed, “We will go forward.”

No matter what forward looked like.


	23. Make Your Peace

The winter was barely starting to show signs of loosening its hold on the ground. The first thaw had not happened, and while that meant there was no mud for the horses to slip on, it too meant there was always a risk of hidden ice causing a catastrophe. Still, there seemed to be less and less ice on the roads, regardless of how frequently traveled they were.

The stretch from midwinter to now had been a cold one, often an amorphic thing marked by little besides critters and men alike trying to dissuade them from continuing their journey. Some of this came in the form of hungry beasts that thought horses and-or humans made a nice snack. Other parts came from bandits. The most difficult to shake off from the soul, though, were the well-meaning folks who _did not want to see so many people risking their lives out there._

It was a little heartbreaking, the thin veil of _do not become like those I have already lost; do not leave those you love behind_ doing nothing to mask the fact these strangers saw ghosts in their eyes, unwilling to let go of what they considered a needless death.

It was frustrating, too, that they could not tell these strangers that if they did not try, they were damning the world. And so, Bedivere made a habit of offering them a smile that came nowhere near his eyes and wishing them well but no more than that.

They, this company of Hunters and royalty and, well, and Alexandra that he had found himself with, had not quite yet learned to act like a true Company. True, they were soldiers, mostly, and he knew Guinevere had been trained with every weapon imaginable – and some quite strange bent mental waste pieces from the local smith's scrap pile – but knowledge did not mean cohesion. The years spent apart eroded most of the tactical training Bedivere had spent over half his lifetime drilling into over half of those around him.

These were individuals used to fighting for survival and coin; despite the just morals that prevented them from preying on towns that could not afford their own militia, they were no longer Camelot's greatest.

Perhaps that was a good thing, given how they were all of the greatest Camelot had to offer that still walked the earth.

Guinevere had spent the winter explaining little bits and pieces of her plan as if she was afraid there would be ears that kept secrets they were meant to forget waiting to find out what she had to say. It had taken near two months to get the entire plan – she had clearly anticipated the slow pace - and even then they were given out of order.

When Alexandra had recognized the signs of a cult like the one that ripped her family from her in one of the towns that had once been on the absolute outskirts of Camelot's borders, Guinevere's paranoia became reasonable.

It had been Dagonet and Kay who ran ahead of the group, their magics wild and weapons left behind. Later, after the remains of the guilty had been burned to asked and the ashes swept up by winds that scattered them too far for any of them to remain together, it was Dagonet who said he could taste the corruption in whatever it was they were doing.

This group, at least, had taken up office in a cave and not a church.

“It was just so wrong,” Dagonet was seated in front of the door of their Inn room, knees to his chest, arms wrapped around his legs, head as low as he could manage, “It was like the magic had been stolen and warped to fit the human body.”

Kay made a small noise – one Bedivere recognized as distress but everyone else assumed was agreement.

“It was the magic of the critters,” Bors' voice was weak, and that sent fear through every one of Bedivere's nerves.

“Wow,” Agrivane was only partly aware he was talking, “that was the first time anyone's called them that I felt fear.”

“I wonder,” Guinevere was tapping her fingers mindlessly on one of the bedposts, “if it's not that these people are stealing the magic from the critters, but that whatever it is that keeps spitting out the critters despite their ability to reproduce is realizing humanity is a much more formidable foe than it had anticipated.”

“That's the most solid thing we have to go on,” Kay was face-down on the floor, exhausted, “Bertilak, Bors, and Agrivane, what do you three think?”

“Me?” Agrivane was the first to respond.

“God, Earth's Champion, can call the gods under duress,” Kay pointed to them in the order he'd named them, “And, Lance, no offense but your silence tells me you are the only magic user who has no idea _at all_ what's going on.”

“If you're worried about offending someone the stakes must by high,” Dagonet muttered. Kay picked up the nearest object – Palamedes' riding boot, and chucked it at Dagonet. That Palamedes was still wearing it was of no consequence to Kay.

“I think,” Bors ignored the entire exchange, “that Queen Guinevere is right. Which means these things – and especially whatever is creating them – is capable of things we will be blindsided by.”

“Is no one...” Alexandra interrupted and then trailed off, staring at Palamedes, who had landed on Dagonet, the two of them tumbling until they came to a stop half on top of Caradoc,

“I have nothing to add,” Bertilak pinched the bridge of his nose, “beyond how worrying that idea is.”

“We can't let that stop us,” Agrivane's voice was almost uncharacteristically sure, “Queen Guinevere's plan – though it basically amounts to _find the outermost cracks Alexandra first brought to our attention, figure out how to seal them, and work our way to the epicenter_ – still holds, even if this theory is true.”

“We're no more than two days away from where we saw the cracks,” Bedivere told everyone.”

“If this goes poorly,” Bertilak's face was a grim thing, “make your peace with everything you've left undone tonight before you go to sleep, because tomorrow none of us will be able to sleep.”

Bedivere did not sleep that night, either. All he could think about was losing Kay _again_. He was not sure he could handle that a second time, was not sure he would be on any use to whatever was left undone at the epicenter should he watch Kay fall.

These monsters, he knew, had magics beyond human imagination.

The next morning, he bought a mace from the local smith.

“Forgoing a shield?” Kay asked when they were on the road again.

“No,” Bedivere shook his head, “I think Bors or Bertilak should carry Excalibur once we start the process.”

“Why?” Bors asked, “You were the one charged with Excalibur.”

“I was charged to use her wisely,” Bedivere was chewing on the inside of his cheek, “and, really, if anyone is going to be able to heal the rent in the very fabric of our reality, it's going to be you two with earth magic.”

There were no disagreements, but there was not an agreement, either. To hand over Excalibur meant he was left without magic of any sort, his fire magics never his and there was never any magic in his shield.

Bedivere knew he was leaving himself at a disadvantage, but this wasn't about him. This was about Camelot. Even more than that, it was about saving the planet that had spat him out in this place and time, had let his existence align with this need.

They rode through the day, conversation sparse and meals left mostly uneaten. Nobody wanted to collapse on the trail or on the field, but neither did they want to empty the contents of their stomachs because their nerves got the better of them.

When they finally made their way to a town so the horses could rest for the night, Guinevere was the one to make them all eat their entire dinners.

“I might get sick,” Caradoc complained.

“You might not,” Guinevere countered.

They ate and it stayed down, the reality that this was likely to be one of their last meals making them try to savor each bite. The stew was warm and the broth was rich. The bread loaves were still warm on the inside when they broke them, the steam and smell drawing sad smiles made of memories of a much simpler world. 

They shared one room despite many more being available, the now-familiar closeness a comfort. Even after the last candle burned itself out, no one found sleep.

“Can I ask a rude question?” Alexandra's voice was small but clear.

“Go for it,” Kay told her.

“Agrivane,” she addressed him directly, “why don't you Hunt?”

“I,” he started saying something, the single sound a pained one.

“When he called the gods down to save his Kingdom and his people,” Bertilak said, “it came with a great cost.”

“You knew?” Agrivane asked.

“Mm,” Bertilak made an affirmative noise, “That you survived the calling down says more about your strength than any battle ever could have.”

Perhaps it was a good thing this hadn't been addressed before, Bedivere thought. Agrivane had always seemed more keen on avoiding questions about his constitution, and knowing he could have died saving a Kingdom he never really wanted would not have inspired confidence within the unwitting King.

If Bedivere was King of a Nation with a Critter Problem, Agrivane was King of a Nation with a Deity Problem.

Bedivere did not envy Agrivane in that.

There were no more questions as sleep evaded them through the night. A few confessions that sounded more like regret than sin broke through the weighted silence. 

“I'm glad I'm here,” Caradoc said at one point, “with all of you.”

The silence seemed more comfortable after that.

“I've always loved you,” Kay whispered in Bedivere's ear at one point, “Even when we were kids.”

Bedivere told Kay the moment he'd realized he was in love with him and felt the wetness of Kay's silent tears as Kay's reply.

“I'm glad I have no children,” Guinevere confessed, “I cannot imagine marching back onto the ground they died on like this.”

The silence became heavy again.

“I wish my brother was here,” Alexandra sniffed, “He wouldn't be scared like I am.”

This went on, secrets being loosed into the world such that they might be woven into the fabric of the future as time saw fit.

They ate as much as they could before the sun had risen – which was not near as much as they would have on a day they were not challenging a portal to another world to a property battle. Bedivere gave Excalibur to Bors and it felt like a final thing, like never again would Bedivere hold that particular weapon.

If that made Bors King of a Nation with a Critter problem, Bedivere again felt no envy for that burden.

“I can feel it,” Bors announced when the sun was only just beginning to exit the morning and cross into its full strength, “the cracks.”

They let Bors take the lead, Bertilak so close behind they may as well have been riding side by side.

The cracks could be felt before they were seen. It was as if something was digging at the lining of Bedivere's skin and trying to pull it from his body with thousands and thousands of tiny fish hooks.

Bors drove his horse harder, faster, took the Company on twists and turns that followed no path before calling for a halt so sudden at least two horses crashed into each other.

Bors and Bertilak were on the ground first, their mounts stamping the ground like they might run away. Alexandra was there with her horse in an instant, all three sets of reins in her almost too-small hand.

There was an unasked _What now?_ hanging in the air that it might as well have been asked by every soul that had been touched by the critters.

Bors took a deep breath and the air seemed to shift, seemed to come alive. He drew Excalibur from his hip and touched her tip to one of the cracks. While Bedivere could not see what was happening, was unable to feel magic like many of the others could, he knew _something_ was happening because a wounded roar came from the general direction of Camelot.

“How far are we from uh,” Laurel swallowed her fear so she could finish her question, “How far are we from Calmelot?”

“Less than a day's walk,” Dagonet said, “Much faster, if your horses are running.”

Agrivane opened his mouth like he might have something to say, but it was drowned out by a louder roar and the sound of distant earth splitting once more.

“RUN!” Dagonet's voice carried over the sound, “We're not going to be able to work our way in like we planned!”

The riven earth, Bedivere realized, knew it was under attack.

Every scrap of plan was left behind as everyone drove their horses forward, towards Camelot.


	24. Never Split the Party

They forced their horses forward as the ground shook beneath them and threatened to pitch horse and rider alike. They managed to ride for a while – not nearly long enough for the distance they needed to cover – before they were too impeded by the unstable ground.

“Can anyone do something about this?” Dagonet's voice carried again, but with it the terror he was feeling.

“Trying!” Bertilak called back, the voice of a god rather than a man, “I'm going to need to be on the ground though.”

Still at the head of the party, Bertilak let himself half-fall, half-jump from his horse. He landed and rolled, coming to a stop at a crouch. There was a surge of magic followed by a stillness to the ground that allowed the Company to regroup. Everyone got off their horses, the terrified animals scattering every which way save for Alexandra's, who stayed tethered to the girl.

“Well I didn't say the rest of you had to abandon your animals,” Bertilak muttered.

“Don't think we had much of a choice,” Bedivere sounded winded, afraid, and more than anything so far, that terrified Lancelot.

“We might have to strike the heart directly,” Caradoc was shaking as he looked around, “the cracks are getting bigger and there's a lot of critters coming our way.”

“He's right,” Laurel's mouth was drawn into a thin line, “We've going to exhaust ourselves if we try to heal the land as we press forward.”

“I should have seen this coming,” Guinevere spat, “Of course it wouldn't so simple as _heal the land, work our way forward_.”

“Now's not the time for regrets,” Bors was the only one who did not seem afraid, “We stick together, and we find the source.”

It seemed simple, the way he said it, so simple it seemed like the only viable option.

Move forward. Kill things before they kill you. Stick together. Find the source. Hope the god and Earth's Champion could heal the riven earth before it killed them. Lancelot could handle that.

“Group up!” Bedivere barked, “Bors, Kay, take point! Bertilak, behind everyone and make sure nothing surprises us from behind!”

Everyone started moving forward, the land groaning and creaking like it wanted to start pitching them every which way again. Bertilak's magic, how ever he was weaving it, held fast.

“Guinevere, with me, left flank!” Bedivere called, “Dagonet and Lancelot, right flank!”

Bedivere had, Lancelot realized, positioned all of those with magic on the outsides of the formation and left those with no more than weapons – or, in Alexandra's case, only a horse hear that trusted her with its life but no sword or mace or actually defend herself – more protected.

Why, then, was Bedivere on the outside? He had no magic, no supernatural boon. And yet, he was willing to put himself between the rest of the group and the monsters. He was, it seemed, Arthur's War Marshall through and through. If Arthur trusted the man, so could he.

“Keep the ground steady,” Dagonet barked, “and I'll be able to grant us all speed.”

“Understood,” Bertilak's voice was strained.

Lancelot waited for whatever it was Dagonet had in mind, almost feared there would be nothing to aid them when -

when a pack of critters closed in on the left flank, Bedivere's roar the only forewarning.

Whatever boon Dagonet might have been trying to grant them, it seemed those they were aiming to destroy had received more than just speed. These monsters, though they looked like countless Lancelot had faced before, moved with greater speed and precision than he had heard of even in drunkenly over-stated tavern stories meant to establish dominance.

“DOWN!” Kay demanded, and everyone listened.

A wall of fire came between the Company and the beasts, some of them slamming into it, moving too fast to stop in time.

Bors and Bedivere made a noise and lept to either side of the far ends of the wall, swinging their weapons almost carelessly.

Not carelessly, Lancelot realized – taking on too many, too fast.

He was running, had nothing to draw from besides his own sweat and fear, but he would make do.

He would ignore how much more pronounced the black lines under his feet were getting.

He did not know who went to the edges of the wall and who kept look-out for an ambush, but the fire wall came down and they started running again.

All Lancelot could hear for a while was his own labored breathing, his blood rushing in his ears. He focused on keeping one foot falling in front of the other, did his best to shove the growing exhaustion out of his mind. He knew battle, knew war, and it never involved this much running.

This was not war as he had always known it. This was something more primal, more wild. It would not do to think like a warrior.

“DRAGON!” Alexandra screamed, her voice shrill and well beyond fear, “GIANT DRAGON RIGHT ABOVE US!!”

And so it was.

It was beautiful, in its own way, white as snow and glistening like the finest jewels as it circled above them. A cascade of breaking from their run brought the group to a halt.

“No,” Bedivere froze. Dagonet slammed into Lancelot and only then did Lancelot realize how much faster they had all been going than should have been physically possible. 

“Not again,” Kay was already in motion, shoving Bedivere to the ground.

“Kay,” Bedivere was on the ground, Kay standing firm between Bedivere and the rest of the world.

“Keep moving!” Kay commanded, “Do not look back!”

“Go, go!” Bors was shouting, “We don't have time!”

Bors hauled Bedivere to his feet and began dragging him along. Bedivere tried to fight, tried to stay with Kay, but Bors held firm, dragging the War Master as if he weighed nothing.

They did not fall back into their pattern – this might have been dangerous, but no more dangerous than it was to reorganize themselves when it was clear their frantic flight to the epicenter had been ended before they'd reached their destination.

The ground pitched under them again and Bertilak made a pained noise.

Lancelot let himself look over his shoulder and saw Bertilak stagger. There seemed to be no foe, but that only eliminated one cause rather than gave any sort of explanation.

He could no longer ignore the fact there was more black than green under his feet.

“What's happening?” Agrivane asked.

“It's,” Beritlak's voice sounded strained, sounded human, “the Earth, she _hurts_ here.”

“We're close,” Dagonet sounded sure, “Can you hang in there just a bit-”

Whatever Dagonet was going to say was cut off by the sound of a roar – not like the one that had signaled their need to rush their end goal, but something more collective, something much closer.

Another group of crit – of monsters – was rushing them, from both flanks this time, a mix of type, all burning so bright any resemblance to fire they would have had on a normal day was gone. This was, without doubt, something from another world entirely.

“Now what?” Caradoc asked.

“Bors, Bertilak, Lance, Gwen, press ahead,” Dagonet told them, “If you can pull them away, I can keep those who lack magic safe.”

Lancelot realized Dagonet was including Agrivane in those who needed protection, and that was it, wasn't it? Only magic _and_ an ability to fight could give anyone a chance of success from here to the end.

“Like hell we're splitting the party more,” Bedivere objected.

“I'm so sorry,” Dagonet seemed to be talking to Bedivere directly.

As Guinevere grabbed Lancelot's hand and started running, Lancelot cast one last glance over his shoulder and saw Bedivere struggling in place.

He hoped Dagonet could live with what he had just done, assuming they saw the other side of this alive.

“I can feel it,” Bors said somewhere to Lancelot's right. 

They were cut off again, this time but a groaning that sounded unearthly.

“I am assuming it's that giant curtain of black smoke that just appeared,” Guinevere said.

“Likely,” Bertilak agreed.

It was too close, too near, they'd be on top of it in just another minute and -

Bors grabbed Lancelot by the shoulder and threw him backwards.

“What -?” Lancelot started to ask.

And then he looked up.

Where there had been nothing stood Arthur, his expression cruel and face twisted into a rage.

“You failed me,” he told Lancelot, “this is your fault.”

And Lancelot knew this to be true.


	25. Turning Dust to Victory

“This is bad,” Agrivane was staring at the direction the other four had went. The horizon had turned into a wall of darkness that was bleeding into the sky.

“We're stuck here,” Alexandra tapped on the invisible wall Dagonet had woven from air and magic and nothing more.

“Not as stuck as Bedivere,” Laurel couldn't help herself, “That looks...gods.”

“Looks human,” Agrivane huffed, “If it was the gods...” he trailed off.

Laurel made a sympathetic noise and rested a hand on Agrivane's shoulder.

“I need to get there,” Agrivane hadn't stopped staring at the horizon, “I need to...I need to be there.”

Alexandra pressed her horse's reins into his hand.

“He can't hear,” she told him, “but he's too stupid to be afraid of anything.”

That explained a lot about the horse, anyways.

“Dagonet,” Agrivane kept his voice as steady as possible, “I need to catch up to them.”

Dagonet made a sound that might have been disappointed, might have been resigned.

“Go, then,” Dagonet said, “Gods help you.”

“That's the plan,” Agrivane could not even force a smile.

–

“Arthur,” Lancelot said with tears streaming down his cheeks, “Arthur, I'm sorry, I'm -”

“What -” Bors started to say.

“Bors!” a voice Bors thought he would never hear again called his name, “Bors, there you are!”

“...Galahad?” Bors' jaw fell open.

“Bors!” Galahad's face lit up, “I thought I'd never see you again!”

Bors turned to face the boy.

“Oh no,” Guinevere whispered to herself as she watched two of the strongest men she'd ever seen babble to thin air.

–

Kay was on his knees, breaths coming too fast to feel like they were doing any good. Ice that had tried to freeze itself to him had melted, leaving him surrounded by slick, thick mud.

That one had _a lot_ more ice power than the first one.

He wondered, for a piece of a moment as he looked at the dead ice dragon a few feet away, if Bertilak had inadvertently given him stronger magic before deciding that, no, he was just furious this time compared to the _panicked and a little angry_ he'd been the first time.

He looked in the directions of the others and saw a darkness flooding upwards.

Now was not the time to rest.

“Alright,” he said to himself, “You got this.”

Despite his exhaustion, he started running again.

–

“What do we do?” Guinevere asked Bertilak.

“Do you not have any regrets?” Bertilak either did not have an answer or was too shaken to reply.

“Several,” Guinevere deadpanned, “but they're not in the form of dead people.”

“It seems like it's,” Bertilak felt the world start to destabilize. He could not tell if it was his magics going awry or if the **thing** in front of them was getting to him, too, or if this was what true death felt like, “it's in their heads.”

“We don't have time for this,” Guinevere growled, “What do you need to get Bors back?”

That she asked only that and not after Lancelot spoke volumes to her character.

“I need a boost,” Bertilak answered honestly, “My magic, it's...wrong.”

Guinevere's face went from serious to terrifying.

–

Agrivane focused Alexandra's horse forward and tried not to think about those he'd left behind.

Those he would likely leave behind for good.

He wasn't kidding himself – what he did nearly killed him the first time.

There, he let himself think it. That was close enough to admitting it, wasn't it? Not that it mattered now.

He wished he'd told Laurel he loved her one last time.

–

“I thought I could trust you,” Arthur sounded wounded, “as my Champion and my partner.”

“I'm sorry,” Lancelot was still on the ground, “Art, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, I should have been better.”

Arthur made a disappointed sound that seemed to mock the former Champion.

“Look where all your potential got me,” Arthur sneered, “Look where it got the world.” Arthur gestured around himself as if to say, _If you had been a better fighter, a better man, none of this would have happened._

Lancelot took a deep breath that turned into a sob.

–

“I need you to hold your axe still,” Guinevere told Bertilak, “sharp end towards me.”

Bertilak had a feeling he knew what was coming, but he did as he was asked anyways.

Guinevere sliced open her palm on the blade, only a brief sound of being wounded had a chance to escape before she slammed her hand to the ground.

Bertilak felt a raw power emanating from the point she made contact with, he own life force mingling with the threads of Bertilak's magic that was still in the ground.

In another life, she would have been a formidable goddess.

–

Agrivane feared he was too late when he noticed Lancelot already on the ground as Guinevere fell to her knees.

Then he _felt._

He felt the Earth go so still it was like it had never moved, never tried to kill them by shaking so badly it threw their horses about. 

He felt a magic like that he'd felt just before he nearly gave his life that Orkney might make it.

He felt the horse pick up speed as if he sensed Agrivane's urgency.

–

“What?” Bors blinked a few times.

“We need you,” Guinevere told him, he voice almost a growl, raw magic that seemed a weapon of its own swirling around her, “You, Excalibur, both?”

Bors turned back around to see his friends – the last of his Camelot he loved so dearly – struggling to hold their own.

He rested his hand on Excalibur's pommel, closed his eyes, and asked what it was he needed to do.

Just out of the corner of his eye, he saw Agrivane dismount Alexandra's horse and a whole new wave of fear and regret threatening to drown him.

If anything happened to the child he'd sworn to protect again, he could not live with himself.

–

Kay felt a surge of magic but did not see anything, so he kept running.

–

“Uh,” Caradoc made a small noise.

“That was Kay!” Laurel had words.

“Oh thank fuck,” Dagonet finally released Bedivere, who fell to his knees, “And, sorry about that, really.”

“Kay,” Bedivere choked his partner's name out but stayed down, eyes following as Kay disappeared from sight.

“He's fast,” Alexandra noted.

“Magic, likely,” Dagonet said, “Fast as fire and just as determined.”

Bedivere made a noise not unlike happiness that seemed to say, _That's Kay._

–

“Do something,” Guinevere might have been begging if she did not seem so full of a general anger.

“That's the plan,” Agrivane replied.

Bertilak realized he was going to watch them both die if he didn't make room for Bors to do whatever it was he seemed to be meditating on.

–

“They're going to need help,” Laurel was watching the horizon, “they're going to need -” her words broke off into a sob. “I can't lose him.”

Alexandra laid a gentle, comforting hand on the center of Laurel's back, and that seemed to undo whatever resolve to stand firm in the face of the end she had left.

–

Lancelot struggled to his to his feet and looked upward, the sky so black it put night to shame. If the stars had all gone out and the sun abandoned them, this is what life might feel like.

What they needed was a storm to wash away the smoke.

He closed his eyes and raised his hands to the sky, begging the water to listen, reaching as far back as he could to the earliest lessons of magic his mother had given him.

–

At last, Bors drew Excalibur.

He focused on the edge of the epicenter as he closed the distance between it and himself.

Came to a sliding halt.

Touched Excalibur to the edge of the chasm.

Struggled to stay upright as the ground under his feet threatened to throw him into the very thing he was trying to seal.

He felt a rush of _critters_ coming from the chasm, pouring into the world in what was, hopefully, a last strike of a dying abomination.

“Please,” he whispered to the Earth, “let me do this.”

There was, he knew, nothing he could do to protect himself and fulfill his Earth-given duties at the same time, so he braced himself to be torn apart by the onslaught.

When it did not happen, he dared to look up and to one side.

He was, he realized, surrounded on all sides by fire.

Not trapped, but protected.

Kay had made it to the front lines.

–

It was almost too still when the rains started.

They came down hard and fast, the smoke and soot and dirt washing away from everyone.

Guinevere let out a surprised-yet-relieved laugh. Lancelot, she knew, had jumped back into the fray.

Arthur had picked well.

–

When the chasm sealed, it happened all at once.

Its webbing seemed to be sucked back into it, all centering around Excalibur.

“We did it!” Bors whooped as he held Excalibur firmly in place lest he let anything escape.

Agrivane fell to his knees, relieved everyone would see the end of this,

–

“Go, go!” Dagonet cried as he let the spell keeping them invisable dissolve, “Back towards what's left of the castle!”

Those he was with did not need to be told twice.

–

Laurel arrived just in time to see the very last of the corruption that had poisoned the land and let monsters into her world vanished under the tip of Excalibur.

“Does this make you King of Camelot?” she heard Agrivane laugh as he clapped Bors on the shoulder.

“Oh, no,” Bors returned the laugh, “Nope, Kay, give this to your boy, it's his problem now!”

“Oi!” Guinevere was grinning as she held out her unmarred hand, “Give it here!”

Bors shrugged and lifted it out of the ground.

Things began to shake again.

“Too soon!” Bertilak cried out, “Too soon!

The ground shook and split apart once more, somehow more violently than it had as Arthur took his last breath.

“No!” Guinevere shrieked, “No!”

It was the cry of an animal that knew it was going to die.

“No,” Bors gripped Excalibur as tight as he could, “not while I am still on watch.”

He rammed Excalibur into the ground again and focused every last piece of his soul into sealing the rift for good this time.

–

Alexandra watched in mute horror as Bors disintegrated to dust and that dust became a part of the healed Earth.

When nothing more happened for several breaths – no rift opening, no barrage of critters come to take a vengeance on what was left of the Company, she let herself scream.


	26. Onward Young Hunter

They sat on and around the ruins of Arthur's table, eyes unfocused if they were open at all.

The table itself had fractured long ago, its circular shape now jagged down one side. There were not near enough chairs left in usable condition for everyone, so they made due. Agrivane had Laurel on his lap, his face buried in her back and arms around her waist.

“I could have,” Agrivane tried to say something, “If I had just,” he tried again and failed again, “Why couldn't it have been me?”

“I shouldn't have rushed this,” Guinevere was seated on the table, Kay on the opposite end as if they could balance each other, legs crossed and elbows on her knees, “I thought it would be...I didn't think it would unfold like this.”

“He gave all so the world may live,” Kay's words sounded empty, “as any of us would have done if we'd been the ones with the power to do so.”

“He just,” Alexandra sniffed, “He just disappeared.”

Outside, the sounds of the storm could be heard through the broken parts of the walls.

“I'd made my peace,” Caradoc said softly, “but I don't think I'll ever feel it again.”

“I hope he's with his boys,” Lancelot said it like it hurt, and it probably did if for no other reason than he had resented Bors in life for how naturally he'd taken on a parental role for a child that Lancelot had never really been able to connect with.

“I'd always figured he'd had kids,” Alexandra admitted, “but it seemed rude to ask.”

Bedivere got up from his seat – at least, it had been his seat when Arthur still sat in the King's seat – and crawled onto the table to lay his head in Kay's lap. Kay stroked Bedivere's hair absently.

“The night we reunited,” Bedivere was staring at what was left of the ceiling as if he might see through it, “when I suggested we work together. I remember he said, _'I had this bastard of a War Marshall who used to tell me two well-coordinated men could fight with the force of twenty, more if they had nothing left to lose.'_ and nothing about the world I'd come to accept was the same after that.”

“You two took me with you,” Alexandra tried to look at Bedivere, “protected me even though I was no one to you. Cared for and about me like I was one of your own, more than my own father did,” her voice grew quieter with each word, “I have no idea what do do from here.”

“I wonder,” Bedivere said, desperate for something else to focus on that may still relate to Alexandra's last statement, “if the magics that let the self-titled Hunters who controlled the towns they protected, well, control so many places with fear are gone now, too.”

“It was very rare for a Hunter to not have some sort of magic that was,” Dagonet chewed on the inside of his cheek for a moment while he considered his next words carefully, “unruly, like they'd been gifted it and instead of taking on the responsibility to protect those who could not protect their own, they wanted more power.”

“I wonder,” Guinevere swallowed like something was stuck in her throat, “how many of those magics were the very things they were slaying sacrificing themselves to get a more human foothold.”

An involuntary shiver made its way around the room.

“The critters,” Agrivane relented, “on the fields of Camlann seemed to scatter once the rift was closed. Almost like they wanted to get as far away from it as possible.”

“They're still out there,” Bedivere said with a heavy sigh, “and we don't know how many who found themselves with surprise magics still have them.”

“I am sure we will hear tales on the road,” Kay said effortlessly. When no one said anything, he continued, “What? Are any of us really going to stop going after them?”

“No,” Palamedes agreed, “even without magics, I did not want to let them find someone who could not hold their own against them.”

“It was rare to meet another Hunter,” Caradoc added, “and even more rare to meet another who did not have magic of some form or another to aid them.”

“It makes sense,” Guinevere ran her unbandaged palm over the table's rough surface, “that so many around the table would get magics that lasted.”

“Oh?” Alexandra asked.

“Camelot was to be a beacon of change and hope that stood steady even against time,” Guinevere explained, “It was a promise and an obligation, circumstances and fates none of us could have escaped if we wanted to once we became entwined with Camelot's destiny.”

“Not all of us were quite so noble,” Agrivane interrupted.

“Some of us tried to escape,” Palamades was looking at Agrivane, “even if it meant doing unspeakable things in our desperation.”

It was the closest thing to forgiveness Palamedes had ever felt, and the furthest thing from the fury Agrivane felt he deserved.

“So, what now?” Bertilak drummed his fingers against the side of his chair, “Now, we keep doing what we were doing. We scrub the last of those critters from the face of the Earth and let this era fade to legend as the future generations keep coming.”

“Makes sense,” Caradoc agreed, “I know I could not find a place to live out my days and do so in peace when I knew there were _critters_ still out there.”

“I can say with certainty they have not crossed the waters to the south,” Lancelot said, “so we know the outer limits of our search.”

“We can discuss logistics later,” Laurel suggested, “for now, we rest and we mourn and we appreciate each other.”

“I wish,” Guinevere looked around, “I wish this was the castle I remembered, or at least closer to it.”

“It could be restored,” Bertilak looked around as well, “It would take some powerful magic to do it without more people than villages can likely spare.”

“Well,” Agrivane nearly grinned but there was a haunted sadness in his eyes, “we did accomplish what a bunch of gods fled from. I am sure we can pull off a miracle.”

Laurel sighed and shook her head as a small, mourning smile tried to ghost over her features. 

“Why did you leave Camelot?” Alexandra asked, “You seem at home here.”

“Arthur, he,” Guinevere frowned and dropped her head lower, “He _knew_ how bad Camlann was going to get, I think. He told me to leave, to find refuge until someone came for me. When no one came and the town I had hidden myself away in evacuated, I went to the only place I knew would stand no matter what had happened.”

“Orkney,” Bedivere realized. Guinevere nodded.

“When you came to my gates,” Agrivane said the _my_ like it was a word he had never said before, “I knew something had gone wrong, even for war.”

“When you called the gods to your stead,” Bertilak had not spoke of that moment, not really, “I felt fear for the first time in centuries.”

“I thought I would,” Agrivane bit his lip so hard a small bloom of blood welled around his tooth, “I thought I _could_ do it again.”

“A small group of people wound up having more strength than the gods,” Bertilak said it to Agrivane directly.

Agrivane made a noise that might have been amusement, might have been disbelief, his face still buried in Laurel's back.

“I still want to be a Hunter,” Alexandra said it like she'd expected someone to tell her it was a dream she was not meant to chase.

“The world is going to need Hunters like you,” Bedivere told her, “Bold, able to keep going despite their fear, and, at the end of the day, able to do the right thing even if you aren't the one who gets the glory.”

Alexandra's face lit up and a spark of hope made itself known once more.


	27. Restoration

He found himself almost pinned into the over-crowded tavern. It was not as if if he had made decision to be trapped in the corner. Everything about him – his scars, his posture, his size, the fury he knew still burned behind his eyes from wrongs that seemed as if they had happened in a different life entirely.

He did not wish for their attention per se, he simply had come to accept that he was recognized now, that damn bard's boyfriend had taken up the storytelling craft from the Fool-turned-Knight-turned-Hero. He could no longer enter a town without someone recognizing him.

There were, he supposed, far worse problems to have.

And yet, when he heard a new voice in the tavern say, “An ale, and one for my friend,” and the barkeeper replied, “Your friend?” he knew someone else had come from from out of town to this specific tavern.

He was on his feet and making his way to the bar, a few cries of confusion from patrons who had wanted his attention and his stories following him.

“Caradoc!” Lancelot's face lit up. The Once-Champion – and Champion still, if rumors were to be believed – had an ale in each hand, one of which he passed to Cradoc.

“Lance!” Caradoc tried out the nickname for the first time, the feelings of compulsive formality finally having faded to manageable.

“How have you been?” Lancelot seemed to be asking in earnest, “Come, let us take a walk.”

Caradoc nodded. Lancelot left a small handful of coins on the bar, presumably for the mugs.

“How is Camelot?” Caradoc asked as soon as they were outside.

“It's coming along,” Lancelot sighed with a half-smile, “Bertilak seems almost too eager to repair more of the castle every time he visits.” 

Caradoc chuckled – the last time he'd seen the god was probably nearing a year ago. They'd crossed paths quite by accident and had not had the time to trade stories and well-wishes. They'd parted with a small, sad smile and a quick _be careful, be well_. 

“What brings you out to these parts?” Caradoc asked.

“I was hoping to find you, actually,” Lancelot told him, “Haven't seen you in a long time and I want to be sure you were,” he paused and took a breath, “I worry.”

“I do not mean to make you worry,” Caradoc lowered his eyes.

“You are welcome with us,” Lancelot tried to assure him, “You are welcome at Camelot.”

“Thanks,” Caradoc meant it despite sounding like he did not, “It's just I -”

“Sir Caradoc,” Lancelot cut him off, “Camelot is your _home_ and _you were there_. At Camlann. At the closing of the riven earth.”

“I couldn't help,” Caradoc hoped saying it aloud would have some sort of cathartic feeling – it did not – but he kept talking anyways, the anger he felt at himself lacing his every word, “I could not spare the King or his son from their rage. I was shielded from the world even as another King rode towards what we had assumed was certain death,” he took a deep breath and stopped walking.

Lancelot stopped as well and turned to face the other man, placing a hand on his shoulder.

“I couldn't help,” Caradoc repeated. This time, though, he just sounded exhausted.

“You Hunted for years on your own,” Lancelot reminded him, “and were invaluable in mapping the spread of the critters.”

Despite himself, Caradoc laughed at the moniker for the monsters.

“You're right,” Caradoc ran a hand through his hair, “It doesn't feel like it, though.”

“Come back to Camelot,” Lancelot told him, “Everyone should be there before a week has passed.”

“Everyone?” Caradoc raised an eyebrow. Lancelot nodded. “Yeah. Yeah, alright.”

Caradoc rode for Camelot with Lancelot the next morning. It was not a long journey – nowhere near as long as it would have been to Orkney – and Caradoc spent most of it trying to keep his thoughts urging him to change his mind silenced.

Kay was first to greet them at the gates. He looked more Seneschal than Hunter, dressed in finery with his hair tamed and pulled back neatly. It occurred to him almost belatedly that Camelot had not had proper gates like this the last time he had visited.

“You found him,” Kay said to Lancelot. It sounded like relief. Lancelot nodded and Caradoc felt like there might be something going on he had not been told about.

Caradoc looked around as they walked to the stables – those were also new – together, their horses either sensing a place to rest or smelling the fresh hay and picking up speed. Lancelot laughed and whispered to his horse. Caradoc opted to tug back on the reigns a little, which earned him a snort and little else from his mount.

A stable boy – who could not have been old enough yet to have been a page – appeared at the entry of the stables to take the reigns of both horses.

“Mind the big one,” Kay was referring to Lancelot's horse. The stable boy rolled his eyes and Kay only chuckled. Kay turned around to face Lancelot and Caradoc before asking: “Shall we?”

“Shall we what?” Caradoc asked as he started following Kay towards the main castle.

“Lance!” Kay admonished. Lancelot did not look guilty and Kay did not offer any more information, so Caradoc decided it was likely not worth the energy to ask again.

Kay and Lancelot engaged in some banter as they walked, a familiar-sounding thing that would have held heat if they did not know each other so well. Caradoc felt like an outsider, but at the same time felt as if they held him in the same familiar regard if they were speaking to each other like this in front of him.

The walkways seemed fairly recently paved, their stones smooth and cracks leveled out. This was not the castle grounds of a siege of monsters – this was a new Camelot, a Camelot that wanted to hold strong in the face of whatever was to come.

After all, it had already seen the rise and fall of the critters.

When they finally entered the castle, it was as if all the air had been stolen from his lungs.

It was Camelot as he remembered Her in Her halcyon days.

He did not know when he had fallen to his knees, but the wood floors felt much better than the fractured stone one he had slept on the night they retook the castle. The walls, once burned and rotten past recognition, were whole, polished. Tapestries hung on the walls, thick things that had to have taken years to weave.

“It's -” Caradoc broke off after the single word.

“It's been a lot of effort,” Kay said fondly, “Not much of mine, I must say.”

Caradoc didn't quite believe Kay's assessment of his own input. Kay had never been the type of Seneschal content to sit in his rooms and delegate every last task except signing the paperwork to some less fortunate soul. A castle was, after all, only as good as its keeper.

“Yeah,” Kay agreed, “that's about how I reacted.”

“It's -” Caradoc tried again, “Camelot.”

“Earth magic and divine magic are rather effective in repairing things,” Lancelot noted, “Well, most things.”

There was a bit about how it had, in the end, been someone so very human who mended the Earth.

“It's beautiful,” Caradoc said as he forced himself to his feet. Kay was there, steadying him. Patient.

He had never used that word to describe the man before, but Kay was being _patient._

“Come,” Kay told him, “You need food, drink, and company.”

Caradoc let Kay lead him to the feast hall – it was as glorious as he remembered it – where some of the rest of the Company waited.

Guinevere he recognized instantly. She was as much a Queen now as she had been when she ruled at Arthur's side. Even in plain clothes, it would have been impossible to mistake her for anything but royalty.

Bedivere he recognized second, the old War Marshall's laugh filling the hall. When Kay took his seat, they were Kay-and-Bedivere, two bodies with two very different personalities who still came together to form a singular energy.

A young woman sat next to Bedivere and it took Caradoc a moment to realize it was Alexandra. It had been three years, but she looked much older, seemed much more weathered. Still, there was this youthful joy around her that assured him the world had not stolen her ability to keep her focus forward.

Caradoc listened, mostly, let the excited buzz of conversation pull him along. By the time everyone had gotten up from the table, he had pieced together that Guinevere intended to act as Camelot's regent until she no longer could, yet she had no intention of restoring Arthur's empire of a kingdom to its former heights. 

She would, Caradoc knew, be good for Camelot. And Lancelot, it seemed, would be good for her.

Lancelot was correct – it took less than a week for the rest of the Company to appear. Bertilak came with Palamedes and Dagonet. Later, Caradoc would learn that the god had been tasked with finding them and asking them to return and they were rarely found more than a few towns apart from each other.

Agrivane and Laurel were the last to arrive. They both seemed older, more tired, but at the same time Agrivane seemed stronger than he had after Bors made his last stand. Whether it was time or magic or something else entirely, Caradoc could not tell. 

“We came as quickly as we could,” Agrivane told Guinevere, the haughtiness that had once been Agrivane's trademark in and out of court gone entirely, “Is she here?”

“Tonight,” Guinevere replied.

Caradoc still had no idea why everyone was in such a rush to arrive at Camelot. He would grant that the castle's restoration was a feat worth traveling for, but perhaps not on such a deadline. No, there had to be something coming, something important and _exciting_ due to happen and nobody had told him. 

He'd been back at court long enough asking might have been awkward, so he decided not to risk it. 

When Nimue – who he heard nearly everyone else greet as _My Lady_ – arrived with Excalibur, the cause for everyone's arrival and excitement became so obvious he felt like he could have guessed what was going to happen with just one or two more hints.

He had always called her Nimue; the title was something she found too stiff and formal. He deducted they did not know her name and at this point it would be truly too awkward to ask, he did not feel as bad for withholding his questions.

There was a clamor to see, to be the one to witness everything as it happened. Caradoc was pretty sure the elbow he took to the ribs was an accident, but he wasn't entirely sure. Alexandra was on Kay's shoulders and, really, she was probably the smartest one among them.

“Nimue,” Guinevere greeted her warmly, “I -”

“Have been waiting, I can tell,” Nimue teased, “I see you've assembled witnesses.”

“It was Kay's idea,” Guinevere said.

Kay did not have the common decency to look humbled or like he did not want the attention that shifted to him for a moment.

All attention shifted back to the Queen and the woman with Excalibur strapped to her hip.

Nimue handed Excalibur to Guinevere with a smile.

“To the end of my days,” Guinevere said as she took the sword, “I will be Camelot's guardian.”

Caradoc couldn't think of a better soul alive to take on that charge.


	28. The Gift of Choice

It had been over two decades since she'd set foot in this town – twice as long as the critters had for their reign of horror over this land she called hers.

If it had been entirely up to her, she never would have returned here. All the good memories it held had been tarnished. When the messenger boy said her father's name and asked if she was his daughter, she'd nearly turned him away.

She kept telling herself she was only here to make sure he was dead.

He was, indeed, dead. Old age, her former neighbors had said; kept running the Inn all by himself, and isn't that just a shame.

She was not surprised they did not recognize her, nor was she surprised nobody seemed to remember why he was all alone in the end.

The spot where the church had been was a pasture for sheep now.

She did not stay to help cover his body with stones.

There had been one recent loss that rattled her – Guinevere, time's victim just as her father, had shown her what it meant to care for someone, what it meant to never give up hope even when it seemed whatever darkness you were facing might destroy you.

The Queen's confession the night they were all worried would be their last had stuck with her. She'd not settled in one location, not taken a partner or had children of her own. 

It was said that the monsters were gone now, the last of them hunted down by a group of Hunters who could tame the wind and stop floodwaters and walk through fire. 

All that was missing was the Hunter who could heal the Earth.

Her father may have just died, but the man who taught her how to live had been gone for so, so long.

She was nearly on her horse when she heard, “Alexandra!”

She knew that voice.

“Bertilak!” she turned towards where his voice had come from and sure enough, there he was.

“You're a hard woman to find,” he informed him.

“Harder when someone's looking for me, apparently,” she did not quite succeed in holding back a grimace.

She had not seen him – or any of the rest of the people she'd ridden with the day the world had no idea it had been saved – since Guinevere's funeral.

“Nimue wishes to speak with you,” he informed her.

Alexandra tilted her head in a way she hoped said _So she sent you to find me?_

“Follow me,” Bertilak told her, “I would suggest on your horse.”

She shrugged and did so.

Bertilak ran faster than her horse, barely pausing to look behind him every now and again to make sure the horse was still following him. Or perhaps to ensure Alexandra was still on the animal. 

She'd known he was a god, but seeing his powers in action was something different entirely.

They came to a stop at the edge of a lake. Alexandra's heart skipped a few beats as she jumped down to the ground, and she did not think it was from the sudden change in speed.

“This is where she got her title?” Alexandra asked as she looked out over the lake's surface.

“Yeah,” Bertilak told her, “She'll be along.”

The early sunset light gave an orange tint to the sun's reflection on the not-quite-gentle waves. A storm, Alexandra, thought, or perhaps Nimue emerging from whatever sort of world she resided in on most days.

When the sun was much closer to set, Nimue finally emerged. She had Excalibur gripped firmly in one hand and absolutely nothing else.

“You alright?” Bertilak whispered.

“Yep,” Alexandra tried to whisper back but it came out as more of a squeak.

“Arthur will walk this Earth again one day,” Nimue said to Alexandra, “and until then, Camelot and Excalibur both will need a guardian.”

Alexandra's first instinct was to rage, to demand why he could not have come back to put a stop to the horrors that claimed everyone she had ever loved, and most of them before their time should have been over. She wanted to tell the god in front of her and the god beside her that humanity would find its own way without their input.

But she didn't.

_If not me, then who?_ she asked herself. She realized that there was no set time for this, no point at which her watch would be over.

She realized, too, that she was being given a choice.

She was being given something none of the people who taught her how to love the world had been given when they took on their burdens.

“For Guinevere,” Alexandra held out her hand, “and for Bors.”

Nimue passed Excalibur to its new keeper.


End file.
